The Case of the Counterfeit Eye (Perry Mason Series Book 6) by Erle Stanley Gardner

Author:Erle Stanley Gardner [Gardner, Erle Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Della Street Press
Published: 2014-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

PERRY MASON SPRAWLED HIS SIGNATURE OVER THE PAPER which Della Street handed him, pressed a buzzer, and, when one of his assistants entered the office, said, “Here are all the papers for habeas corpus on behalf of one Peter Brunold. Get some fast action.”

“You want Brunold out?” the assistant asked.

“They won’t let him go,” Mason said, “but I want to force their hands and make them put a charge against him. They probably don’t want to charge him with murder right now. But that’s the only charge they can put against him, so we’ll force their hand with a habeas corpus.”

Mason turned to Della Street, as the assistant took the papers and went out. “Did you ask Drake to come in here?” he inquired.

“Yes. I told him to come directly to your private office. He should be here. . . . That’s he at the door now.”

A shadow hulked on the frosted glass panel of the door. Della Street glided across the office, opened it, and Paul Drake grinned at Perry Mason.

“Got a hunch?” he asked, sliding into the big over-stuffed leather chair, his knees draped across one of the arms, the small of his back propped against the other.

“Yes,” Mason said. “This Fenwick woman.”

“What about her?”

“One of three things happened to that woman,” Mason said. “Either she was kidnapped by the murderer, or she met with some accident, or she skipped out.

“The murderer didn’t know her—that is, he hadn’t seen her first. If she’d met with an accident, the police would have spotted her by this time. Therefore, I think she skipped out.”

“That, of course,” the detective said slowly, “is acting on the assumption she told the truth about what she had seen the night of the murder. She may have skipped out because she knows something that would put Dick Basset on the spot.”

Mason nodded his head moodily and said, “There’s a diamond-shaped panel of plate glass in the door of Hartley Basset’s entrance room. She’d been slugged and was groggy. When she got up from the couch, she staggered and slapped both of her hands against the glass in order to catch herself. She must have left ten perfectly good finger-prints on that glass.

“Now, I’m just wondering about that girl and don’t want to overlook any bets. She has some powerful motive for skipping out. Either she’s protecting someone, or she’s concealing something she did the night of the murder, or she has a record and doesn’t dare to stand police questioning. She could have gone into the room, found Hartley Basset dead, lifted a bunch of money from his pocket, then socked herself on the head with something and pretended to be out.

“She could have seen Dick Basset commit the murder and skipped out to keep from testifying.

“She could be a crook, with a criminal record. Let’s investigate all the possibilities. Skip out to Basset’s house, develop those latent finger-prints on the glass of the door, photograph them, and see if you can get an identification.

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