“Did you have any trouble getting Milicant to agree to come to your rescue?”
“None whatever. He recognized that it wasn’t fair to make me the goat in his business.”
“Did your troubles affect your appetite?” Mason asked.
“My appetite?”
“Yes.”
“No. When things go against you, they go against you. That’s all there is to it. There’s no use pulling a baby act.”
“Isn’t it a fact that in the Home Kitchen Café on the eighth of this month at some time during the lunch hour, you intimated to me that if Alden Leeds would give you some form of financial renumeration, you would change your testimony so it would appear that telephone conversation with Conway took place after Leeds had left Conway’s apartment?”
“That’s not true,” the witness shouted, “and you know it’s not true!”
“You made no such offer?”
“No. You tried to bribe me and I told you Alden Leeds didn’t have money enough to make me change my story. You tried to threaten me, to bribe me, and to intimidate me.”
Judge Knox regarded Mason in frowning concentration, but Mason casually passed on to something else.
“Mr. Serle,” he asked, “you were arrested the night of the murder on a felony charge, were you not?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been prosecuted on that felony charge?”
Kittering was on his feet. “Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial,” he said. “It is not a proper question by way of impeachment. It is only when a witness has been convicted of a felony that that point can be brought out on cross-examination.”
Mason said, “I am not trying to impeach the witness. I am trying to show bias.”
“Objection overruled,” Judge Knox said.
“I haven’t been tried on that case,” Serle said, “because there wasn’t any case. The raid was made on a tip-off from Alden Leeds. There wasn’t any evidence.”
“As a matter of fact,” Mason said, “you were shrewd enough to realize that you could ingratiate yourself with the district attorney’s office by changing the time of that telephone conversation from ten-thirty to ten o‘clock, and did so. Now isn’t it a fact that this telephone conversation which you have referred to as taking place at ten o’clock actually did not occur until approximately thirty minutes later?”
“That is not a fact,” Serle shouted.
“And that as you first related that conversation to the officers at headquarters and as you subsequently related it to me there in the Home Kitchen Café, you made no mention of Hogarty telling you that he had a conference in ten minutes which he expected would take about ten minutes?”
Serle shifted his position, but his voice was calm.
“I remembered some of the conversation more clearly after I’d had a chance to think it over. But that’s what Hogarty told me all right... You know how those things are. You don’t remember everything a man says to you over the phone the first time you try to recall the conversation.”
“After you left this apartment house where Conway, or Milicant, had his apartment, you went directly to the All Night and Day Pool Room, did you not?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“How long was it after you left Conway’s apartment before you entered the pool room?”
“I don’t know. I’d say it was fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“And what were you doing in the meantime?”
“Various things.”
“Name one.”
“I was telephoning.”
“To whom?”
“A friend.”
“Who was this friend?”
Serle paused and looked expectantly at Kittering. Kittering got to his feet, and said, “Your Honor, I object. Not proper cross-examination. Counsel can be given a reasonable latitude in checking the time element. Please note that so far as this witness is concerned, there is no question whatever of his testimony being pertinent to the case except insofar as it relates to the question of time. It is the contention of the defense, naturally, that this telephone conversation occurred after Leeds had left the apartment. It is the contention of the prosecution that it did not.”
Judge Knox glanced down at Perry Mason.
“I’d prefer to have you pass this question for the moment, counselor, and lay some foundation to show that it’s pertinent to the case. The court doesn’t want to embarrass other parties by dragging in their names — unless it’s necessary.”
Mason went on with the cross-examination, calmly, casually.
“Isn’t it a fact that when you entered the pool room, you told witnesses there that you were going to call Louie Conway around ten-thirty?”
“I may have,” Serle said.
“You were lying to these men?”
“I wasn’t lying. I saw no reason for telling pool-room loafers all of my private affairs.”
“Notwithstanding the fact that you knew when you entered the pool room that you intended to call Bill Hogarty, or Louie Conway, as the case may be, at ten o’clock, you nevertheless told these men that you were going to place the call at somewhere around ten-thirty?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you tell the district attorney when you first repeated your story that you had called Conway at ten-thirty?”
“No.”
Kittering said, “Your Honor, I would like to have the decedent referred to as Hogarty rather than Conway. It will keep the record free from confusion, and...”
Judge Knox interrupted. “There is not sufficient proof as yet to warrant the court to require counsel to so frame his questions.”
Mason said, as though the point were of no great importance: “Oh, I guess it’s all right. I’ll stipulate his real name was Hogarty, and so refer to him if counsel wishes.”
“Very well, so stipulated,” Kittering said.
Judge Knox looked sharply at Perry Mason. “That stipulation of identity may be important on the question of motivation, counselor.”
“It’s all right,” Mason said carelessly. “I’ve known he claimed to be Hogarty for some time, and if Kittering has proof of it, I’ll save time by stipulating.”
“I do have proof,” Kittering said.
“Very well,” Judge Knox observed. “Go on with your cross-examination, Mr. Mason.”
“Did you tell the district attorney at first that the time was ten o’clock?” Mason asked.
“I didn’t mention any time.”
“I see,” Mason said. “You told the officers that you had called Hogarty. They then explained to you that it was important to fix the time of that call because if it was after ten-twenty, it would mean they couldn’t convict Alden Leeds of the murder. Isn’t that right?”
“Well, we had a talk. They told me some things and I told them some.”
“Did they explain to you the importance of the time element before you mentioned the exact time of that telephone conversation to them?”
“Well, yes.”
“And you were shrewd enough to realize that this might give you an advantage, so you made some statement to the effect that you saw no reason why you should co-operate with the officers if they were going to raid your place of business, and arrest you on a felony charge, did you not?”
“Well, naturally, I didn’t feel any too cordial.”
“And one of the officers said that that might be fixed up, didn’t he?”
“Well, he said that if the prosecuting witness didn’t show up, it was no skin off their shins.”
“All right,” Mason said, “now getting back to what you did after you left Hogarty’s apartment. You telephoned a friend of yours. Isn’t it a fact that that telephone call was to the Home Kitchen Cafe, and that you talked with Hazel Stickland?”