The Case of the Singing Skirt (23 page)

"How in the world did you know?" Della Street asked him as they descended in the elevator.

"Because," Mason said, "it was the only thing that could have happened. From the time Ellen Robb got that gun from me she didn't have time to find the yacht, fire a bullet into the body of Nadine Ellis and return to the Surf and Sea Motel. Remember that Drake traced her movements from the bus depot to the motel.

"The only thing that could have happened was that the boat with the body of Nadine Ellis must have been taken to sea in two installments. First, a night cruise to some isolated cove in Catalina; then, in the second stage, being pointed out to sea and left to run out of fuel. The only place I could think of where the yacht could have made such a two-stage cruise was by stopping at Catalina and, quite obviously, Ellen Robb had no opportunity to get to Catalina on at least two different occasions.

"Moreover, once I stopped to think of it, I realized that the gun which was found in the cabin with Nadine Ellis must have been planted there after Mrs. Ellis had been killed. One shot had been fired from that gun, and the gun, fully cocked, was lying on the cabin floor near her hand.

"When a person tries to do accurate shooting with a double-action gun, he quite frequently pulls back the hammer so as to work the mechanism with a simple pull of the trigger, but when one is trying for rapid shots at close range, there is no time to cock the gun manually. Almost invariably, under such circumstances, a person uses the double-action mechanism and in so doing it would be impossible for the gun to have been fully cocked after the first shot had been fired. Therefore I began to suspect the gun had been a plant and if it had been planted, then the bullet fired into the woodwork of the cabin was designed to throw us off the trail.

"After that it was simple, once I realized that the bullet from the Anclitas gun must have been fired first. That meant that Mrs. Ellis must have been dead when I handed Ellen Robb the other gun. Then the yacht must have started to Catalina Island before Ellen Robb came to my office. This meant Helman Ellis must have been lying about that whole conversation he claimed he had with his wife on Wednesday morning. For one thing, the Ellises had only one car, and the evidence that Helman drove it to Ellen's motel Tuesday night precluded the possibility that Mrs. Ellis had driven it to Phoenix Tuesday evening. Once I started on that chain of reasoning, I knew what must have happened"

"But how did you know the bullet from the Anclitas gun was the first bullet?"

"Because I marked the barrel with an etching tool before it left our possession, and the bullet recovered from the body of Mrs. Ellis didn't show those marks which would have been on it if it had been fired after I marked the barrel with the etching tool."

"Well," Della Street said, "you certainly had your back to the wall that time. Is this going to teach you not to take chances on behalf of your clients in the future?"

Mason grinned and shook his head. "It's simply going to teach me to practice the art of concentration," he said. "I never thought as fast or as hard in my life as I did from the time court adjourned yesterday afternoon until I threw the crucial question at Helman Ellis in cross-examination last night.

"When I left that courtroom, I felt as though I had been put through a wringer."

Della Street looked up at him with admiration in her eyes. "Yet during all of that time," she said, "you never wavered in your loyalty to your client, despite the fact that you were virtually certain she had lied to you."

Mason heaved a sigh. "Della," he said, "whenever I waver in my loyalty to a client, do me a favor. Just close up the office, get some paint remover and erase the words ATTORNEY AT LAW from the door of the reception room."

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22/08/2007

LRS to LRF parser v.0.9; Mikhail Sharonov, 2006; msh-tools.com/ebook/

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