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“I know it.”
“Okay, I’ll turn the men loose on the housekeeper. How did that Georgia stuff suit you?”
“Swell.”
“What do you want me to find out about the housekeeper?”
“Everything you can. And about the daughter too. Don’t overlook a single bet.”
“Listen,” said Drake. “Have you got something up your sleeve, Perry?”
“I’m going to get her out.”
“Do you know how you’re going to do it?”
“I’ve got an idea. If I hadn’t had an idea how I could get her out, I wouldn’t have got her in, in the first place.”
“Not even when she tried to put a murder rap on you?” asked Drake, curiously.
“Not even when she tried to put a murder rap on me,” said Mason, doggedly.
“You sure as hell do stick up for your clients,” said Drake.
“I wish I could convince some other people of that,” the lawyer said, wearily.
Drake looked at him sharply. Perry Mason went on, “That’s my creed in life, Paul. I’m a lawyer. I take people who are in trouble, and I try to get them out of trouble. I’m not presenting the people’s side of the case, I’m only presenting the defendant’s side. The District Attorney represents the people, and he makes the strongest kind of a case he can. It’s my duty to make the strongest kind of a case I can on the other side, and then it’s up to the jury to decide. That’s the way we get justice. If the District Attorney would be fair, then I could be fair. But the District Attorney uses everything he can in order to get a conviction. I use everything I can in order to get an acquittal. It’s like two teams playing football. One of them tries to go in one direction just as hard as it can, and the other tries to go in the other direction just as hard as it can.
“It’s sort of an obsession with me to do the best I can for a client. My clients aren’t blameless. Many of them are crooks. Probably a lot of them are guilty. That’s not for me to determine. That’s for the jury to determine.”
“Are you going to try and prove this woman was crazy?” the detective asked.
Mason shrugged his shoulders. “I’m going to keep a jury from convicting her,” he said.
“You’ll never get away from that confession,” said Drake. “It shows murder.”
“Confession or no confession, they can’t prove her guilty of anything, until the jury says she’s guilty.”
Drake shrugged expressive shoulders, and said, “Oh, well, there’s no use of our arguing about it. I’ll turn the men loose on the Veitches, and get all the dope for you.”
“I don’t suppose I need to tell you,” said Mason, “that minutes are precious. All that I’ve been fighting for all the way along is time enough to get the evidence I want. You’ve got to work fast. It’s a matter of time, that’s all.”
Perry Mason went back to his office. The puffs under the eyes, which came from fatigue, were more pronounced, but his eyes were steady and hard.
He opened the door of his office. Della Street was at the typewriter. She glanced up, then looked back at her work.
Mason slammed the door shut behind him, walked over to her. “For God’s sake, Della,” he pleaded, “won’t you have confidence in me?”
She flashed him a swift glance.
“Of course I’ve got confidence in you.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“I’m surprised and a little confused, that’s all,” she said.
He stood surveying her, moody-eyed, hopeless.
“All right,” he said, at length. “You get the State Bureau of Vital Statistics on the telephone, and stay on the telephone until you get the information you want. Get somebody at the head of the department if you can. Never mind what it costs. We want the information, and we want it right now. We want to know whether or not Norma Veitch was ever married. My best guess is that she was. And we want to know if there’s been a divorce.”
Della Street stared at him.
“What’s that got to do with the murder case?”
“Never mind,” he said. “Veitch is probably her real name. That is, it’s her mother’s name, and it would be the name that was on the marriage license as the name of the bride when she was married. Of course, she might not have been married, and she might not have been married in this state. But there’s something fu
“You don’t think Norma Veitch was mixed up in it in any way, do you?” Della Street asked.
Mason’s eyes were cold, his face determined.
“All I’ve got to do is to raise a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury,” he told her. “Don’t forget that. Get on the telephone and get that information.”
He walked into his i
He was still pacing the floor, half an hour later, when Della Street opened the door.
“You were right,” she said.
“How?”
“She was married. I got the dope from the Bureau of Vital Statistics. She was married six months ago to a man named Harry Loring. There’s no record of a divorce.”
Perry Mason gained the door with three quick strides, pushed it impatiently to one side, strode across the outer office and went at almost a run down the corridor to the stairs. He took the stairs down to the floor on which Paul Drake had his office and banged on the exit door of Drake’s office with impatient fists.
Paul Drake opened the door.
“Hell, it’s you! Don’t you ever stay in your office to see clients?”
“Listen,” Mason told him, “I’ve got a break. Norma Veitch was married!”
“What of it?” asked Drake.
“She’s engaged to Carl Griffin.”
“Well, couldn’t she have gotten a divorce?”
“No. There’s no divorce. There wasn’t time for a divorce. The marriage was only six months ago.”
“Okay,” said Drake. “What do you want?”
“I want you to find her husband. His name’s Harry Loring. I want to find out when they separated, and why. And I’m particularly anxious to find out whether she ever knew Carl Griffin before she came to the house on her visit. In other words, I want to know whether she’d ever visited her mother while her mother was working at Belter’s place, before the date of this last visit.”
The detective whistled.
“By God!” he said. “I believe you’re going to set up a defense of emotional insanity, and the unwritten law for Eva Belter.”
“Will you get busy on that thing right away?”
“I can have it for you inside of half an hour if he’s anywheres in the city,” said Drake.
“The sooner the quicker. I’ll be waiting in the office.”
He went back to his own office, walked past Della Street without a word.
She stopped him as he was entering his office. “Harrison Burke telephoned.”
Mason raised his eyebrows.
“Where is he?”
“He wouldn’t say. He said he was going to call later. He wouldn’t even leave me a telephone number.”
“Presume he’s read about the new development, in the extras,” said Mason.