Chapter 17

Perry Mason's fingers drummed on the edge of his desk. His eyes, steady in their cold concentration, rested on Paul Drake's face. "Your man picked them up at the railroad depot, Paul?"

"Yes. He found them about ten minutes before train time. He took the same train they did, wired me from a suburban stop. I got busy on the telephone and had operatives board the train at different points to give him reinforcements. We've kept the pair in sight ever since they started."

"I want them kept on the run," Mason said.

"That's what Della Street told me. I wasn't certain I got the message straight. I wanted to find out just what it was you wanted."

Mason said slowly, "I want them hounded, I want them frightened, I want them kept on the move. Every time they go to a place and register under assumed names, I want those names. I want photographic copies of the hotel register."

"You want them to know that detectives are on their trail?"

"Yes, but I want it done cleverly. I don't want them to think detectives are too close on their trail. I want them to think detectives are just blundering around, covering the various hotels with descriptions and that sort of stuff."

The detective smoked silently for several seconds, then blurted out, "I think you're crazy, Perry!"

"Why?"

"It's none of my business," Drake said slowly, "but this man, Pender, must have been on the scene at the time of the murder. He telephoned his sister and admitted that he rang the doorbell of Moxley's apartment at around quarter past two in the morning. He had a motive for killing Moxley. He had undoubtedly been threatening Moxley. Now, if, instead of getting this man on the run, you should have him arrested and turn the newspaper boys on him, he'd make a lot of favorable publicity for Rhoda Montaine."

"Then what?" Mason asked.

"Then the district attorney would be in a spot. You could demand that Pender be arrested. You could demand that the district attorney call him as a witness."

"Then what?"

"Why then," Drake said, "you'd have him before the jury and you could rip him to pieces. You could show that he came here to get money out of Moxley; that he did it by making threats. You could make him either admit that he was on the scene of the murder at about the time it happened, or else you could impeach him by showing the conversation he had with his sister. You could show the way he treated my operative."

Mason smiled. "Yes," he said, "I could do all those things. For a while I'd be sitting pretty. Then we'd go to trial. The D.A. would put Pender on the witness stand, let Pender admit that he called up Moxley and tried to get money out of Moxley, let him admit, if necessary, that he made threats to Moxley. Then he would have Pender testify that he went to Moxley's apartment sometime after two o'clock in the morning, that Moxley had told him he was going to meet Rhoda Montaine at two o'clock and that she would have money for him. Pender went to collect the money. That's only natural. And Pender would testify that he stood in front of the street door which opened on Moxley's stairway and rang the bell repeatedly and didn't get any answer.

"That would tie in with the testimony of the witnesses who lived in the other apartment house, and by the time Rhoda Montaine got on the witness stand and tried to swear that she was the one who was ringing the bell while the murder was being committed, the jury would put her down for a liar. Then the district attorney would start dangling that garage key in front of the jury, and Rhoda Montaine would draw a verdict of firstdegree murder."

Drake nodded thoughtfully. "But," he said, "what's the idea of keeping those people on the run?"

"Sooner or later," Mason said, "the district attorney is going to realize the really vital point in this case. Some one was standing in front of the street door of Moxley's apartment ringing the bell, at the very moment the murder was committed. The testimony of the prosecution's main witnesses will establish that. Now, whoever that person was, he or she must be innocent of the murder, because, obviously, a person can't ring a doorbell on a street door and, at the same time, club a man over the head in an apartment on an upper floor and in the back of the house. On the other hand, the person who was ringing that doorbell isn't going to be anxious to come forward and admit being in the vicinity of the murder at the time it was committed, but when he is once run to earth by the district attorney, he's going to tell his story eagerly enough. Therefore, we have two people who are going to fight over that doorbell. One of them will be the person who actually was standing in front of the door, ringing the doorbell, and the other person will be the one who was murdering Moxley at the time the doorbell was ringing. Both of these people will insist that they were the ones who rang the doorbell.

"Rhoda Montaine has been the first one to advance her claim. It is weakened very materially by the presence of her garage keys in Moxley's apartment, but the jury may believe her, just the same. If, however, the district attorney can find some one who will go on the stand and swear positively that he was the one who was ringing the doorbell, it is going to weaken Rhoda Montaine's case."

Drake nodded. "If," Mason went on, "the district attorney gets hold of Pender, and Pender tells him his story, the district attorney will make him a star witness for the prosecution. I'll have to crossexamine him and try to prove to the jury that he is the murderer instead of the one who was really ringing the doorbell. Obviously, if I'm forced to crossexamine this man along the usual lines of simply trying to prove he's lying, I'm not going to get very far. The district attorney will have coached him and coached him carefully. But, if I can crossexamine him by proving to the jury that he fled over the country, using different aliases, leaving places in the dead of night, slinking about the country from city to city as a common criminal, I can brand his testimony as a lie. Now, that's what I'm doing with Oscar Pender, and, incidentally, with his sister. I'm giving them an opportunity to impeach themselves before a jury. The more places that they go to and leave hurriedly, the more different names they take, the more attempts they make to disguise themselves and to conceal themselves, the more the jury is going to believe that they are the guilty ones. That's more particularly true because Pender will probably forget some of the places he went to and some of the names he used. If I can produce hotel registers to impeach his testimony, I can rip him wide open."

"Then," Drake said, "you intend to let the district attorney discover Oscar Pender eventually."

"At the proper moment," Perry Mason said, "I may let the district attorney get hold of Oscar Pender, but I want to have it in my power to produce him, or not to produce him, just as I see fit."

Drake nodded his head, said slowly, "You say there will be two people who will claim to have been on the scene of the murder, ringing that doorbell. One of them will be the murderer. The other one will be the one who was actually ringing the doorbell. We now have found these two people. One of them is Oscar Pender; the other one is Rhoda Montaine. Therefore, one of these people must be guilty of the murder."

A slow smile twisted Perry Mason's countenance. "Excellent reasoning, Paul," he said, "only it happens that there are three people who claim to have rung that doorbell."

"Three?" the detective asked in surprise. "Who's the other one?"

"I can't tell you, Paul, I can only tell you that he's a person the district attorney knows about. So far, the district attorney hasn't been able to get any admissions from him because this man is trying to protect Rhoda. Sooner or later they'll drag his story from him. That's going to put Rhoda in an awful spot.