“I know,” Mason said. “I— Here! What’s this?”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Inskip said.
They propped the mattress on its edge and looked at a small, round hole in the mattress.
“It looks to me,” Inskip said, “as though someone had held a gun right up against the bottom of the mattress and pulled the trigger, holding the gun on an angle so the bullet wouldn’t go all the way through.”
“Well, let’s find out,” Mason told him.
“How are we going to do it?”
Mason pushed his finger in the hole, said, “That won’t do it. Let’s see if we can get something to use as a probe.”
“There’s a wire coat hanger in the closet,” Inskip said. “I have a pair of pliers with wire cutters in my bag. I always carry pliers with me, because you never know what you’re going to run up against in this business. Let me make a probe.”
Inskip cut a piece of straight wire from a coat hanger while Mason held the mattress.
The detective ran the wire up inside the hole in the mattress for a few inches, then said, “Here it is. I can feel the wire hitting something hard.”
“Can you make a hook on that wire and get it out?” Mason asked.
“I can try,” Inskip said, “by putting a loop on the thing and working it over. I’ll see what I can do.”
Inskip used his pliers, then again put the wire probe in the hole in the mattress, manipulated it back and forth, up and down, said, “I think I’ve got it,” then pulled. He pulled something back for a couple of inches, then the probe slipped loose.
“Have to get another hold,” Inskip said. “I think I can widen that loop a little now.”
He again worked on the wire, then once more pushed it up in the hole, said to Mason, “I’ve got it now.” He pulled back on the wire. A metallic object popped out of the hole and fell down between the springs.
Inskip retrieved it. “A 38-caliber bullet,” he said.
Mason stood motionless, his eyes half-slitted in thoughtful concentration.
“Well?” Inskip asked.
“Let’s get the bed back into shape,” Mason said. “Turn the mattress the way it was.”
“Now what?” Inskip asked.
Mason said, “Take a sharp knife, take the pointed blade of the knife and make some kind of an identifying mark on that bullet so you can recognize it. Better put it on the base of the bullet. Try not to disfigure the bullet any more than possible.”
“Then what?”
“Keep that bullet with you,” Mason said. “Don’t let it out of your possession at any time, no matter what happens.”
“Now, wait a minute. You’d better keep it,” Inskip said.
Mason shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to be a witness in a case I was defending. I want you to keep that. And I want you to keep it with you. Don’t let it out of your possession. Get some soft tissue and wrap it up so you don’t destroy any of the striations on that bullet.”
“Then what?” Inskip asked.
“Then,” Mason said, “we make up the bed and you can go to sleep.”
“But how the devil did that bullet get in that mattress?” Inskip asked.
“That,” Mason said, “is one of the things we’re going to have to find out.”
“Do we want to tell anyone about this?”
“Not now,” Mason said. “The police would laugh at us and claim we were faking evidence.”
“Later on it’ll be just that much worse,” Inskip pointed out.
“I know,” Mason told him. “That’s why I want you to keep the bullet. What’s your background? How long have you been in this business?”
“Quite a while. I was a deputy sheriff for a while, then I drifted up to Las Vegas, and worked there. I did some security work when Hoover Dam was going through. I’ve been with the government and now I’m working as a private operative.”
“Ever been in trouble?”
“No.”
“Nothing they can throw up at you? You’re not vulnerable in any way?”
Inskip shook his head. “My nose is clean.”
“All right,” Mason told him, “save that wire probe so you can show it if you have to.”
“What’s the significance of that bullet?” Inskip asked.
“I don’t know,” Mason told him. “That is, I don’t know yet.”
“Okay, you can call on me any time.”
“You going to tell the police about this?” Mason asked.
“I’d like to, Mr. Mason.”
Mason said, “Hold it until ten o’clock tonight, anyway. I want first chance to tell the police about it. Then you can—”
“Let’s not talk time schedules,” Inskip interrupted. “Let’s leave it this way: I suggest to you that I think the police should know about this, and you say that you’re going to tell them. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mason said, “we’ll leave it at that. I didn’t say when, did I?”
“No. You didn’t say when. I told you to report to the police. You said you would. I assumed you meant right away. However, because of that assumption I didn’t pin you down. That was my mistake. That’s all it was, a mistake.”
“A mistake,” Mason agreed.
Chapter Twelve
Judge Clinton DeWitt nodded to Hamilton Burger. “Do you wish to make an opening statement, Mr. Burger?”
Burger nodded, got up from the counsel table and lumbered over to the jury box.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “I am going to make one of the briefest opening statements I have ever made. We expect to show that on the sixteenth day of October the defendant, Gerald Conway, was president of a corporation known as California & Texas Global Development & Exploration Company, usually referred to as Texas Global.
“Mr. Conway was engaged in a proxy fight with a former official of the company, one Gifford Farrell. There were advertisements in the newspapers asking stockholders to send in proxies to a committee which was pledged to vote Mr. Farrell into power. That stockholders’ meeting, ladies and gentlemen, is now three days away. At the insistence of the defendant, this case has been brought to trial so that the issues could be clarified before that meeting.
“We expect to show that the decedent, Rose M. Calvert, was employed by Gifford Farrell in a confidential capacity to make an ultra-secret list of the proxies which had been received. She typed out that list and gave it to Mr. Farrell.
“We expect to show that, in some way, the defendant found out the decedent was typing that list. When he found that he could not bribe her, he tried to take the list away from her at the point of a gun. She resisted and was shot.
“Thereupon, we expect to show that the defendant released to the press and gave to the police an utterly fantastic story designed to account for his presence in the room where the murder had been committed. We expect to show that the defendant went to his present attorney, Perry Mason, and consulted that astute lawyer, long before anyone knew a murder had been committed. We expect to show that Perry Mason immediately started working out what he hoped would be a good defense for the defendant.
“The defendant was spirited to the Gladedell Motel where he occupied Unit 21 during the night.
“We expect to show, at least by fair inference, that during that night the defendant went out and buried the weapon with which the crime had been committed.
“This was a Colt revolver No. 740818, being of .38 caliber and without any question, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, being the weapon that fired the bullet that took the fife of Rose Calvert.
“We expect to show that the defendant went to the Redfern Hotel, entered the room where the murder was committed after giving the clerk a fictitious name so as to make the clerk believe that the young woman in the room was his secretary. We expect to show that the room where the murder was committed had been rented by the victim under this fictitious name. We expect to show, according to his own admission, that the defendant had a key to that room, that he entered that room, was there for an appreciable interval, and then left the room and went at once to consult an attorney. We will show that the defendant’s attorney knew the identity of the murdered woman long before the police knew it, and that the only way he could have had this information was from the mouth of the defendant.