Judge Knox nodded to George Shoemaker, one of the most skillful of the trial deputies in the district attorney's office. "You may proceed," he said, "with the testimony in the preliminary hearing in the case of People versus Julia Branner upon stipulation of the Defense that witnesses are now to be examined by mutual consent and that the Defense waives any question as to time."
"So stipulated," Mason said.
Shoemaker said, "We will call Carl Smith." A stockily built man in the uniform of a cab driver came forward, sheepishly held up his hand, was sworn and took the stand.
"Your name's Carl Smith, and you are now and were on the fifth day of this month a cab driver?"
"I was."
"Do you know the defendant, Julia Branner?"
The cab driver looked down at Julia Branner who sat in tight-lipped rigidity slightly behind Perry Mason. "Yes."
"When did you see her for the first time?"
"On the night of the fifth, about one o'clock in the morning. She put in a call and I answered it. She gave me a letter addressed to Renwold C. Brownley and told me to take it out to the Brownley residence. I told her it was pretty late to do anything like that and she said it was all right, Mr. Brownley would be glad to get the letter."
"Anything else?"
"That's all she told me. I took the letter out. A young man opened the door when I rang the bell at Brownley's house. I gave him the letter. He said he'd take it to Mr. Brownley. I asked him what his name was and he said…"
"Just a moment," Mason snapped. "I object to any conversation between these two people on the ground that it is merely hearsay and not part of the Res Gestae."
"Sustained," Judge Knox ruled.
Shoemaker, with a triumphant smile, turned toward the courtroom and said, "If Philip Brownley is in the courtroom, will he please stand up?" Philip Brownley, looking very slender and pale in a blue serge suit, got to his feet. "Have you ever seen that man before?" Shoemaker asked the cab driver.
"Yes. He's the man I gave the note to."
"That's all," Shoemaker said.
Mason waved his hand and said, "No questions."
"Philip Brownley, will you take the stand?" Shoemaker asked.
The young man came forward and was sworn.
"Are you acquainted with Carl Smith, the witness who has just testified?"
"Yes."
"Did you see him on the morning of the fifth?"
"Yes."
"Did he give you anything?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"A letter addressed to my grandfather, Renwold C. Brownley."
"What did you do with it?"
"I took it immediately to my grandfather."
"Had he retired?"
"He was reading in bed. It was his custom to read until late in the evening."
"Did he open the letter while you were there?"
"Yes."
"Did you see the letter?"
"I didn't read it, but he told me what was in it."
"What did he tell you was in it?"
Mason said, "I object, your Honor, on the ground that it's not the best evidence; that it's hearsay and is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial."
Judge Knox said, "I will sustain the objection."
"What," asked Shoemaker, frowning, "did your grandfather do or say immediately after receiving the letter?"
"Same objection," Mason said.
"I won't admit any statement as to what was in the letter nor whom it was from," Judge Knox ruled, "but I will admit, as part of the Res Gestae, any statements that might have been made by Mr. Brownley as to what he intended to do or where he intended to go."
Philip Brownley said in a low voice, "He said he had to go down to Los Angeles harbor at once to meet Julia Branner. I understood him to say he was going to meet her aboard his yacht."
"Move to strike out the part about meeting Julia Branner," Mason said, "as not responsive to question, incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial and hearsay."
"I will reserve a ruling," Judge Knox said, "but I'll leave it in if subsequent testimony shows it to be what I consider part of the Res Gestae."
"It's too remote to be part of the Res Gestae," Mason objected.
"I don't think so, Mr. Mason. However, that will depend somewhat on the evidence. You may renew your motion later on if, after the evidence is all in, it appears to be too remote."
"Did he say anything else?" Shoemaker asked.
"Yes. He said the she-devil had kept his son's watch for years and now she was willing to let it go."
"Move to strike that out," Mason said, "as not being part of the Res Gestae and as being an attempt to show the contents of a written document by parol; as hearsay, incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial."
"Motion is granted. It will be stricken," Judge Knox ruled. "It is not part of the Res Gestae."
"What did your grandfather do?" Shoemaker asked.
"He dressed, went to his car and drove out of the garage about two o'clock."
"You're acquainted with Perry Mason, the attorney who is representing the defendant?"
"Yes."
"Did you see him on that same evening, or rather on the evening of the fourth?"
"Yes. It was around eleven o'clock, between eleven o'clock and midnight."
"Did you talk with him?"
"Yes."
"Did you discuss your grandfather's will with him?"
"Yes."
"Did he discuss a conversation he had had with your grandfather?"
"In a way, yes."
Mason said, "Your Honor, I object to an attempt to prove that conversation until proof has been made of the corpus delicti."
Shoemaker said, "Your Honor, I'm not going any farther into the conversation at this time. Later on I expect to prove that Perry Mason learned on the evening of the fourth that Renwold Brownley intended to execute on the morning of the fifth documents which would transfer the bulk of his estate to his granddaughter, Janice Brownley; that Mason communicated that information to his client, and that this furnished the motive for murder. However, I am not going into it at the present time. You may cross-examine, Mr. Mason."
Mason said, "You were waiting for me when I left your grandfather's house?"
"Yes."
"How long had you been waiting?"
"Only a few minutes."
"You knew when I left the room where I had been talking with your grandfather and went to my car, didn't you?" Mason asked.
"Yes. I heard you leave the room."
"And then you went out to stand in the driveway and wait for me. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"But," Mason said, "your clothes were soaking wet. It was raining hard, but not hard enough to wet you to the skin in the few seconds which clasped between the time I left the room where I was with your grandfather and the time you met me in the driveway. How do you account for that?"
Young Brownley lowered his eyes and said nothing.
"Answer the question," the Court ordered.
"I don't know," Brownley said.
"Isn't it a fact," Mason asked him, "that you had been standing out in the rain before I left the house? Isn't it a fact that you could hear much, if not all, of what was said in my interview with your grandfather? Weren't you listening outside one of the windows?"
Brownley hesitated. "You answer that question," Mason thundered, getting to his feet, "and tell the truth."
"Yes," young Brownley said after a moment, "I stood outside of the window and tried to hear what was being said. I couldn't hear it all, but I heard some of it."
"So," Mason said, "you knew then that your grandfather was going to execute these documents in the morning, documents which would irrevocably place the bulk of his estate in the hands of the young woman who was living there in the house as Janice Brownley."
"Yes," Philip Brownley said slowly.
"So," Mason went on, "so far as motive is concerned, you had a motive for murdering your grandfather. In other words, you stood to profit by his death. If he died before those documents were executed, your inheritance would have been one-half of the estate, in the event Janice Brownley was really a granddaughter. And if it could be proved that she was not the granddaughter, your inheritance would have been the entire estate. Is that right?"
Shoemaker jumped to his feet. "Your Honor," he shouted, "I object! The question is argumentative, irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial. It's not proper cross-examination. It calls for a conclusion of the witness upon matters of law."
"I am asking it," Mason said, "only to show bias on the part of the witness."
"I think," Judge Knox ruled, "that the question is argumentative and calls for a conclusion. If you want to prove it, you'll have to do it by asking the witness how much of the conversation was heard, just what was said, and leave the legal effect of it for the Court to determine."
Mason shrugged his shoulders and said, "I have no further questions of the witness."
Shoemaker hesitated as though debating the advisability of asking further questions on re-direct, then shook his head and said, "The witness is excused. Call Gordon Bixler."
Gordon Bixler, a bony-faced individual of about forty-five, wearing a gray business suit, took the witness stand and testified that his name was Gordon Bixler; that he was a yachtsman, was the owner of the yacht Resolute; that on the night of the murder he had been on a trip to Catalina in his yacht; that he had returned in a driving rain and had telephoned from the clubhouse for his Filipino boy to meet him with a car; that he had then attended to certain details in connection with the mooring of his yacht and leaving it in condition for the next cruise; that his Filipino boy had not shown up; that he had waited for more than an hour and had heard an automobile in the road near the clubhouse; that he had gone out to investigate, thinking his Filipino boy had become confused, since he had only been at the Yacht Club on one previous occasion; that he had started walking toward the headlights of the automobile whose motor he had heard, and had observed that the car was being driven very slowly; that, while he was watching it, a woman who wore a white rain coat walked out from the side of the road; that the car stopped and the young woman stepped to the running board, and spoke for a few moments to the driver of the car; and thereupon the woman stepped back to the ground and the car ran slowly on down the road and had almost reached the witness when it turned into a side street, over to another road, speeded up, turned and circled back; that it had almost reached its original position when he saw the young woman in the white rain coat step out from the shadows, and jump to the running board of the car; that by this time the witness thought his Filipino boy had had trouble of some sort and thought that he might be able to get the man in the car to give him a lift; that he started walking toward the car and suddenly saw several stabbing flashes and heard the rapid reports of a gun; that he thought there were five shots in all, but there might have been six; that he saw the woman in the white coat jump from the running board and run to the shadows. A Chevrolet automobile, which had been parked in the shadows of a crossroad, roared into motion and swept down the road away from him at high speed. The witness ran to the other automobile. A man's body was lying with the left arm and shoulder and the head hung over the left-hand door of the car. Blood was running from bullet wounds down the outside of the car and collecting in a pool on the left-hand running board. The man was Renwold C. Brownley and was dead. The witness had met Brownley on several occasions, and there was no chance he could be mistaken.
The witness then admitted that he became rattled and confused; that he ran blindly through the rain until he encountered a car driven by some man whom he did not know, but who had later turned out to be Harry Coulter, a private detective; that in company with this detective, the witness searched for the Brownley car and failed to find it that they had telephoned officers, who had finally arrived and taken up the search; that the time, as nearly as he could fix it, when the shooting took place was about two forty-five in the morning, that he had telephoned for officers about ten or fifteen minutes past three o'clock.
Shoemaker turned the witness over to Mason for cross-examination.
"You were badly rattled?" Mason asked.
"I was, yes, sir. It was all so sudden and so unexpected that I became very much confused."
"Why didn't you get into Brownley's car and drive it and him to the nearest hospital?"
"I just never thought of it, that's all. When I saw this dead man sprawled out with his head and shoulders hanging over the window, and realized it was Renwold Brownley and that he'd been murdered, I became confused."
"And you were pretty much confused before you recognized Brownley, weren't you? The knowledge that this woman in the white rain coat had fired several shots at close range at the driver of that car had naturally upset you, hadn't it?"
"Yes, sir, it had."
Mason placed the tips of his fingers together and took his eyes from the witness to stare intently at his fingertips. "It was raining?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Raining hard?"
"Well, it wasn't raining quite as hard then as it had been a little while before. There had been a let-up; but it was raining."
"This was near a yacht club of which you are a member?"
"Yes."
"There's a fence separating that yacht club from the highway?"
"Yes."
"No street lights?"
"No."
"It wasn't moonlight?"
"No, sir."
"No stars visible?"
"No, sir… I see what you're getting at, Mr. Mason, but there was plenty of light to enable me to see what I've testified to."
"What was the source of that light?"
"There's a mast in front of the clubhouse of the yacht club and there are flood-lights on this mast to illuminate the moorings and the parking spaces where members keep their cars."
"And how far were those flood-lights from the place where the crime was committed?" Mason asked.
"Perhaps three or four hundred feet."
"So that this road was brightly lighted?"
"No, sir. I didn't say that."
"But it was lighted?"
"There was some light."
"Enough to enable you to see objects distinctly."
"Understand, Mr. Mason," Bixler said with the belligerent manner of one who had been carefully coached to avoid a certain trap, "this woman wore a white rain coat which made her quite visible after she stepped out of the shadows. The road was dark, all right, and there were deep black shadows, but when the woman stepped to the running board of the car there was enough illumination so I could see her figure quite distinctly. I couldn't see her features and I haven't tried to identify her."
"Your identification," Mason asked, "is due to the fact that she wore a white rain coat. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"How do you know it was white?"
"I could see it was white."
"Couldn't it have been a light pink?" Mason asked.
"No."
"Or a light blue?"
"No."
Mason suddenly raised his eyes from his fingertips to stare intently at the witness. "Are you willing to swear," he asked, "that it was not a light yellow?"
The witness hesitated, then said, "No. It wasn't a light yellow."
"Didn't have any yellow in it?" Mason asked.
"No, sir."
Mason said slowly, "You understand, there's a distinction between pure white and a light buff, or a cream color?"
"Yes, sir, of course."
"And sometimes, even in daylight, it's difficult to distinguish these colors?"
"Not particularly. I know white when I see it. This was a white rain coat."
"For instance, this sheet of cardboard," Mason said, whipping an oblong of pasteboard from his pocket, "is it white or yellow?"
"It's white."
Mason took another sheet of dead-white cardboard from his pocket, held it up, side by side with the other, and a titter ran through the courtroom.
Bixler said hastily, "That's my mistake, Mr. Mason. That first piece of cardboard had some yellow coloring in it. It looked white because you were holding it up against your dark suit. But, now I see the white cardboard placed beside it, I can see the difference in color."
Mason said casually, and after the manner of one who is seeking to help a witness clarify his testimony, "And if a white sheet had been held back of that rain coat you saw the night of the murder it would have helped you to detect the light yellow tint in the rain coat, just in the same way this white card has enabled you to see the difference between it and the yellow card. Is that right?"
"Yes, sir," the witness said, then lowered his eyes and said, "I mean, no, sir. That is, I think it was a white rain coat."
"But it might have been a light yellow one?" Mason asked, gesturing with the hand which held the two pieces of cardboard so that the witness's eyes shifted to the pieces of cardboard.
Bixler glanced helplessly at the deputy district attorney, at the unsympathetic faces of spectators in the courtroom. He slumped within his clothes as though his self-assurance had been suddenly deflated. "Yes," he said, "it might have been a light yellow rain coat."
Mason got slowly and impressively to his feet. Staring steadily at the confused witness, he said, "How did you know Brownley was dead?"
"I could tell by looking at him."
"You're positive?"
"Yes, sir."
"But you were badly rattled at the time?"
"Well, yes."
"And you didn't feel for his pulse?"
"No, sir."
"You could only see him in the illumination which came from the dash light of the automobile?"
"Yes, sir."
"You've never studied medicine?"
"No, sir."
"How many dead people have you ever seen in your life-I mean before they were embalmed and placed in coffins?"
The witness hesitated and said, "Four."
"Had any of those persons died by violence?"
"No, sir."
"So this was your first experience in viewing a man who had been shot, is that right?"
"Yes, sir."
"And yet you're willing to swear the man was dead when you made no examination?"
"Well, if he wasn't dead he was certainly dying. Blood was spurting from those wounds."
"Ah," Mason said, "he might have been dying, but not dead."
"Well, perhaps."
"And when you say that he was dying, you don't claim to have any medical skill, and had never before seen any man who was dying from gunshot wounds?"
"No, sir."
"And had never seen a man die from gunshot wounds?"
"No, sir."
"But you do know generally that sometimes men are shot, sometimes seriously, and ultimately recover, don't you?"
"Well… yes. I've heard of such cases."
"Now, do you want to swear that this man was dying?"
"Well, I thought he was dying."
"You wouldn't think much of a doctor who took a look at a man in the dim light given by the dash light of an automobile and then turned away and said the man was dead or dying and nothing could be done for him, would you?"
"No, sir."
"You'd expect a doctor to listen for heart action with a stethoscope, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Yet you expect to look at the first man you had ever seen shot and be able to tell more than a trained physician, who had handled hundreds of similar cases, and without making the examination the physician would have had to make in order to reach an opinion?"
"Well, no, sir, I wouldn't say that."
"Well, then, you don't know the man was dying, do you?"
"Well, I knew he had been shot."
"Exactly," Mason said, "and that's all you know, isn't it?"
"Well, he was lying there all slumped over in a heap and he'd been shot, and there was blood on his head and on his clothes."
"Exactly," Mason said, "that's all you can swear to. You heard shots fired, ran to the car, saw a man slumped over and bleeding, and that's all you know, isn't it?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"You don't know whether he was dead?"
"No."
"Nor whether he was dying?"
"No."
"Nor whether the shots were more than mere flesh wounds."
"Well… no, I didn't examine him."
"That," Mason said, "is all."
"No re-direct," Shoemaker said, hesitating a moment.
"Call your next witness," Judge Knox ordered.
Shoemaker called the police officers who had answered the telephone call to the harbor. They testified to the search they had made for the automobile, of finally discovering bloodstains on the pavement; of tracing the reddish stains, which had been mixed in with the rain water, until they came to a pier; that they had grappled and had pulled an automobile to the surface; that the car was that of Renwold C. Brownley; that it had been left in low gear and was still in low gear when recovered; that the hand throttle had been pulled open and that, after the car had been recovered, tests made with it showed that the position of the hand throttle was such that the car would go exactly 12.8 miles per hour in low gear with the hand throttle in the same position as when the car had been recovered; that they had found a.32 caliber Colt automatic on the floor of the car; that they had found some empty cartridges; that they had recovered from the upholstering of the car two bullets, one of which had evidently missed the occupant of the car, the other showing evidences of having passed through human flesh.
At this point, Judge Knox announced that the hour was twelve-thirty, and adjourned court until two o'clock in the afternoon.
Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake went to lunch in a little restaurant on North Broadway, where they were able to secure a booth.
"What do you make of it, Paul?" Mason asked.
"You going to make a fight on the question of corpus delicti?"
"Yes. I had been hoping I could do it all along. But I wasn't certain what Bixler would testify to. I was afraid he might swear positively the man was dead, and stick to it. As it is, I think I can get the case thrown out of court."
Drake nodded. "You made a swell job of that cross-examination, Perry. Bixler was so rattled Shoemaker was afraid to try any re-direct."
"Isn't that going to be a highly technical defense?" Della Street asked.
Mason said grimly, "You're damned right it's going to be a technical defense. But, nevertheless, that's the law. Many people have been hanged on circumstantial evidence, where it subsequently appeared that the supposed victim never had been killed, but was alive and well. And that's the reason they made the law the way it is. The term, corpus delicti, means the body of the Offense. In order to show it, in a charge of homicide, the Prosecution must show death as the result, and the criminal agency of the defendant as the means. Now the Prosecution's going to run up against one big hurdle on this corpus delicti business. They can't show death, and if they're not careful, I can trap them into being crucified by their own proof."
"How do you mean?" Della Street asked.
"It's a goofy crime," Mason said. "The woman, whoever she was, fired the shots from the automatic, and then beat it. Now, the evidence shows that she beat it in her own car, going at high speed. Someone drove Brownley's car into the bay. That someone couldn't have been the person who did the shooting, because she had been seen by the Prosecution's own witness dashing madly away from the scene of the crime. It's improbable that she had a confederate who remained in the background while the shooting took place, only to step out subsequently and drive the car off the end of the wharf.
"The only other explanation is that Brownley was unconscious when Bixler looked in the car; but that after Bixler left Brownley recovered consciousness enough to try to drive the car in search of help; that he managed to get the car started, but was driving more or less blindly through a lashing rain, became confused on roads, and drove himself off the end of the pier."
Drake nodded slowly.
"Now, then," Mason said, "if when they recover Brownley's body, they find he died of drowning, it doesn't make any difference whether he might have died of the gunshot wounds within the next thirty minutes or the next thirty seconds. The fact that his death occurred from drowning, rather than from the wounds, means they can't convict Julia Branner of murder, because the wounds weren't the actual cause of death. That's a technical point, but it's been adjudicated."
Della Street frowned at her coffee cup and said, "Listen, Chief, on all your other cases you've been representing someone who was innocent. You've managed to bring the case to a spectacular conclusion by showing that the Prosecution had made a bad guess. People are for you. You have a reputation now, both as a lawyer and a detective; but the minute you resort to the ordinary tactics of the average criminal lawyer, you're going to turn people against you. If you use your ingenuity to get a guilty woman acquitted on a technicality, people are going to think you are tied up with murderers. They're going to lose their respect for you."
Mason said slowly, "In other cases, Della, I was more or less in the clear. On this case I'm in up to my necktie. They're going to put Pete Sacks on the stand. The minute they do that, and he testifies that Julia Branner asked him to murder Brownley and gave him the key to her apartment, and then says that I trapped him into a position where I stole that key from him, it's going to look like hell. That key wouldn't have been important if I hadn't taken it-but when I grabbed it, I made it the most important bit of evidence in the case. If the district attorney overlooks it, the Bar Association won't."
"Could you keep Sacks from testifying if you tripped them up on this corpus delicti business?" Drake asked.
"That's exactly the point," Mason told him. "That's why I'm making this defense. If I can beat the case on the corpus delicti, I'll get Julia Branner off temporarily. They'll throw this case out of court and everything will then wait until they recover Brownley's body. Sacks will never get a chance to tell his story, and the key won't seem so important. When they do find the body, the chances are I can prove Brownley died by drowning. Then, if the district attorney proceeds against me, it'll look like spite work. I've got to beat them on this corpus delicti angle. And after I do that, I've got to find more facts that will help our theory of the case."
The detective said, "I've got men working on every angle of the case, Perry, but I can't find out a damn thing that's going to help us any. I've traced Mallory from the time he left the steamship in San Francisco until he arrived in Los Angeles. He stayed at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, went directly there from the ship, and as nearly as the hotel employees in San Francisco can tell, the bishop who checked out was the same bishop who checked in."
"That bishop," Mason said, drumming with his fingertips on the edge of the table cloth, "in some way is the key to the whole business. Why did he call on me? Why did he disappear? If he's the real goods, why did he take a runout powder? If he's an impostor, why didn't he pull a more convincing fade-out… telephone me he had to leave on a secret mission and ask me to carry on? There were plenty of ways he could have kept up the pretense, yet eased himself out of the picture. The darn case is driving me nuts because I can't get a toe-hold. I'm clawing at a blank wall. And why does Julia Branner act the way she does? Why won't she talk to me? Can't she see she's sending herself to the gallows and putting me in an impossible position?"
"Perhaps she won't talk because she's guilty," Della Street suggested.
"I'm not so certain she's guilty," Mason remarked. "The theory of the crime the Prosecution has worked out doesn't sound any too logical. She may be protecting someone else and may be innocent, herself."
Drake said, "Forget it, Perry. How in hell could anyone have framed this crime on her? She wrote the note to Brownley. When they find his body they'll find the note in his pocket. It will be in her handwriting. It will crucify her. She lured him down to that place near the waterfront. There's no possibility of doubt on that score. She wanted him killed, both for her daughter's sake, and because she hated him. How could anyone have taken her gun without her knowing it, have gone to the very place where she instructed Brownley to be, dressed in exactly the same clothes, and driving the same make of car? Remember, Julia Branner didn't write that note until after you'd telephoned her and told her what was in the wind. Therefore, her whole scheme of luring Brownley to the waterfront was hatched after that time; and anyone who wanted to frame her must necessarily have started from scratch after that note was written. I tell you, it's impossible."
Mason looked at his watch and said, "Well, we'll go back to court and see what develops. We're not licked yet by a long ways."
"If Pete Sacks ever takes the stand and swears you framed him and stole that key from him, it doesn't make much difference what happens after that. Public sentiment will have turned definitely against you," Drake said. "You've got to keep him from telling his story, either by this corpus delicti defense or in some other way."
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
Della Street said, softly, "Listen, Chief, you put me on the stand and let me tell my story. Do it just as soon as you can after Sacks tells his story. I'll fix him. I'll tell what he tried to do to me, and, after that, people will want to lynch him. And if Shoemaker wants to try to rattle me on cross-examination I'll do plenty to him."
Mason squeezed her hand and said, "Good girl. I know I can depend on you."
As they left the restaurant, Drake said to Mason in a low tone, "You can't let her do that, Perry. It'll look as though you two trapped Sacks, that Della led him on by luring him to her apartment. It looks too damned much like a badger game. It'll put Della in a hell of a position before the public."
Mason said gloomily in the same low, growling tone of voice, "Do you think you're telling me anything? But don't let her know. I'm not even going to put her on the stand."
Della Street said, "What are you two getting your heads together about? You sound as though you were hatching up some deviltry. Come on or you'll be late for court."