“In other words,” Mason said with a grin, “regardless of our own convenience, we customers are held as living advertisements when we enter a restaurant during the slack time.”
“Well, customers make swell window dressing if that’s what you mean,” Baker said.
“That’s what I mean,” Mason told him affably. “Thank you.”
“The next witness,” Kittering announced, “will be William Bitner.”
Bitner proved to be a handwriting and fingerprint expert who qualified himself as an expert in his profession, and started the long routine of introducing exhibits, photographs of latent fingerprints found upon doorknobs, bureau drawers, table tops, glassware.
Time droned on endlessly while the tedious process of identifying each photograph went on. Then when the photograph had been introduced, handed to counsel for inspection, and received as an exhibit, it was necessary to wait while the court made the necessary identification; and then the process went on again. Kittering, with a mind which reveled in detail, paused to make sure that the exhibits were properly numbered in numerical order.
When he had finished with some forty-two exhibits, he started exploding his bombshell, a bombshell which was legally powerful, yet which lacked dramatic force because of the long, drawn-out manner in which the details had been dragged through the record. “I show you a card containing ten fingerprints, and ask you who took the imprint of those fingerprints,” Kittering said.
“I did,” the witness answered.
“When did you take them?”
“Three days ago.”
“Where did you take them?”
“In the county jail.”
“And what are they?”
“Those are ink impressions made from the ten fingers of the defendant in this case. Those fingerprints are grouped into pairs in accordance with the accepted practice, and reduced to a fraction. That is, a number, representing certain figures used for classification, appears in the numerator, and another number, similarly taken, in the denominator.”
“Now then, I will direct your attention to People’s Exhibit C, and ask you if on this exhibit appears a fingerprint similar in any way to any of the ten prints shown on this card.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“Here, to the side of the bureau drawer. You will note the prints of the middle finger of the right hand. I have here an enlarged copy of that print, together with an enlarged copy of the print of the middle finger of the defendant’s right hand. I detected twenty-three points of similarity.”
“Will you please explain to the court these points of similarity.”
And so the afternoon droned on with the state remorselessly piling up an avalanche of fingerprint evidence against the defendant, with Alden Leeds sitting erect and dignified, without so much as batting an eyelash, Perry Mason and Della Street, fighting against the sheer fatigue of inaction, yet with nothing to which they could object, listening to the legal bricks being dropped into place in a wall which was designed to cut off all hope of the defendant’s escape.
At length, the hour came for the afternoon adjournment.
“How much longer will you be with this line of evidence, Mr. Deputy District Attorney?” Judge Knox asked.
“Probably all day tomorrow, Your Honor.”
“Very well, court will reconvene at ten o’clock. In the meantime, the prisoner is remanded to the custody of the sheriff.”
As court adjourned, Mason moved over to place a reassuring hand on Alden Leeds’ shoulder. His face, which was turned toward the courtroom, was wreathed in a confident smile, but the low-pitched words which came from his lips, and were only audible to the ears of the defendant, were far from reassuring. “It looks as though you’d been holding out on me,” Mason said.
Leeds faced him calmly. “I am not a young man,” he said. “I have but little to gain from an acquittal in this case, and less to lose from a conviction. I didn’t realize that I had left fingerprints in that apartment. I did not kill John Milicant. He... We can prove he was alive and well when I left.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “We can produce evidence to that effect,” he said, his lips still smiling reassuringly, “but that’s no sign a jury is going to believe it. One thing is certain. The judge is going to bind you over on a charge of first degree murder.”
“I had anticipated that,” Leeds admitted quietly.
“We hadn’t,” Mason observed. “We would have if you’d told us about these fingerprints.”
“I didn’t know about them.”
“You knew you’d searched that apartment.”
Leeds said nothing.
Mason, smiling broadly, patted him on the shoulder as a deputy sheriff approached.
“Okay, Leeds,” he said, loudly. “Things are looking fine. They don’t have a ghost of a chance of pinning this on you. Get a good night’s sleep now, and leave the worry to us.”
Out in the corridor, Della Street fell into step with Perry Mason.
“Those fingerprints,” she said, “don’t look so good, do they, Chief?”
“I’d more or less discounted them in advance,” he said. “I figured that Leeds must have been the one to search that apartment, although he said he hadn’t. What I was mainly counting on was that he’d been too smart to leave fingerprints. Apparently, he was in too much of a hurry to be careful.”
“What,” she asked, “would happen if tomorrow they show that his fingerprints are on the handle of the knife?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
“Let’s not worry about that in advance. He’s in bad enough right now. Let’s go to the office and see if Drake has uncovered anything.”
Chapter 12
At the office Mason found a letter addressed to him in feminine handwriting on the stationery of the Border City Hotel at Yuma. The letter read simply:
DEAR MR. MASON
I am a seamstress soliciting work by mail. If you have any sewing which I could do, or if there are any tears or holes which seem hopeless, you will find I am quite skillful, and I will deeply appreciate having an opportunity to show you what I can do. Simply address Mrs. J. B. Beems at the Border City Hotel, Yuma, Arizona.
Mason took out his notebook, made a note of the address, thought for a moment, and then touched a match to the letter.
Della Street, who had gone down to Drake’s office to notify him that Mason was back, came in with the detective in tow. “Hi, Paul,” Mason said. “What’s new?”
Drake jackknifed himself into a characteristic pose in the big chair, and said, “I’ve located Inez Colton.”
“Where?” Mason asked.
“At the Ellery Arms Apartments,” Drake said. “She’s used henna on her hair and is going under an assumed name, but I don’t know what name, or the number of her apartment. I was afraid to make any inquiries without consulting you, for fear she’d get wise and take another powder. You see, Perry, I can’t put a tail on her because we have no one who knows her personally, and no one to put the finger on her. We simply have a description to go on.”
“How did you ever locate her?” Mason asked.
“Simple,” Drake said. “Like all other good gags, it’s been used before, but it’s one of the things people seldom think of. I figured she’d try to change her appearance. Walking out on her job that way indicated it. I managed to find out who her favorite hairdresser was, and an operative, posing as a friend and doing a lot of talking, got the information out of the hairdresser — at least that much information.Women hate to have strange hairdressers do a dye job.”