Mason took a hot shower, crawled into bed, and sank instantly into restful oblivion only to be aroused, seconds later, it seemed to him, by the insistent ringing of the telephone.
He managed to get the receiver to his ear and muttered thickly into the telephone, “Hello!”
Paul Drake’s voice, crisp and businesslike, said, “The fat’s in the fire, Perry. Get going.”
“What?” Mason asked.
“Police checking back on Denham’s associates got on the trail of some traveler’s checks. It seems a whole flock of traveler’s checks were cashed. They bore the signatures of Stewart G. Bedford. Because of his prominence, the police were reluctant to start getting rough until they’d made a complete check.
“They got photographs of Bedford and took them out to Morrison Brems, the manager of The Staylonger Motel. Brems can’t be certain, but he thinks from the photographs the police had that Bedford was the man who registered with the blonde.
“The police have—”
“Have they made an arrest?” Mason interposed.
“No.”
“Brought him in for inquiry?”
“Not yet. They’re going to his office to—”
Mason said, “I’m on my way.”
Mason tumbled into his clothes, ran a comb through his hair, dashed out of the apartment, took the elevator down, jumped into his car and made time out to Bedford’s office.
He was too late.
Sergeant Holcomb, a uniformed officer, and a plainclothes detective were in Bedford’s office when Mason arrived. A rather paunchy man with a gold-toothed smile stood patiently in the background.
“Hello,” Mason said. “What’s all the trouble?”
Sergeant Holcomb grinned at him. “You’re too late,” he said.
“What’s the matter, Bedford?” Mason asked.
“These people seem to think I’ve been out at some motel with a blonde. They’re asking me questions about blackmail and murder and—”
“And we asked you nicely to let us take your fingerprints,” Sergeant Holcomb said, “and you refused to even give us the time of day. Now then, Mason, are you going to advise your client to give us his fingerprints or not?”
“He doesn’t have to give you a damn thing,” Mason said. “If you want to get his fingerprints, arrest him and book him.”
“We can do that too, you know.”
“And run up against a suit for false arrest,” Mason said. “I don’t know anyone I’d rather recover damages from than you.”
Sergeant Holcomb turned to the paunchy man. “Is this the guy?”
“I could tell better if I saw him with his hat on.”
Sergeant Holcomb walked over to the hat closet, returned with a hat, slapped it down on Bedford’s head. “Now take a look.”
The man studied Bedford. “It looks like him.”
Sergeant Holcomb said to the man in plain clothes, “Look the place over.”
The man took a leather packet from his pocket, took out some various colored powders, a camel’s-hair brush and started brushing an ash tray which he had picked up.
“You can’t do that,” Mason said.
“Try and stop him,” Holcomb invited. “Just try and stop him. I don’t know anyone I’d rather hang one on than you. We’re collecting evidence. Try and stop us.”
Holcomb turned to Bedford. “Now then, you got twenty thousand dollars in traveler’s checks. Why did you want them?”
“Don’t answer,” Mason said, “until they can treat you with the dignity and respect due a man in your position. Don’t even give them the time of day.”
“All those checks were cashed within a period of less than twelve hours,” Sergeant Holcomb went on. “What was the idea?”
Bedford sat tight-lipped.
“Perhaps,” Holcomb said, “you were paying blackmail to a ring that was pretty smart. They didn’t want you to be able to make a payoff with marked or numbered bills, so they worked out that method so they could cash the checks themselves.”
“And thereby left a perfect trail?” Mason asked sarcastically.
“Don’t be silly,” Holcomb said. “The way those checks were cashed you couldn’t tie them in with Binney Denham in a hundred years. We’d never even have known about it if it hadn’t been for the murder.”
The plain-clothes officer studied several latent fingerprints which he had examined with a magnifying glass. Abruptly he looked up at Sergeant Holcomb and nodded.
“What have you got?” Holcomb asked.
“A perfect little fingerprint. It matches with the little fingerprint on the—”
“Don’t tell him,” Sergeant Holcomb interrupted. “That’s good enough for me. Get your things, Bedford. You’re in custody.”
“On what charge?” Mason asked.
“Suspicion of murder,” Holcomb said.
Mason said, “You can make any investigation you want to, or you can make an arrest and charge him with murder, but you’re not going to hold him on suspicion.”
“Maybe I won’t hold him,” Holcomb said, “but I’ll sure as hell take him in. Want to make a bet?’
“Either charge him, or I’ll get a habeas corpus and get him out.”
Holcomb’s grin was triumphant. “Go ahead, Counselor, get your habeas corpus. By the time you get it, I’ll have him booked and have his fingerprints. If you think you can get a suit for malicious arrest on the strength of the evidence we have now, you’re a bigger boob than I think you are.
“Come on, Bedford. Do you want to pay for a taxi, or shall we call the wagon?”
Bedford looked at Mason.
“Pay for the taxi,” Mason said, “and make absolutely no statements except in the presence of your attorney.”
“Fair enough!” Sergeant Holcomb said. “I don’t need more than an hour to make my case bulletproof, and if you can get a habeas corpus in that time, you’re a wonder!”
Stewart G. Bedford drew himself up to his full height. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I desire to make a statement.”
“Hold it!” Mason said. “You’re not making any statements yet.”
Bedford looked at him with cold, resolute eyes. “Mason,” he said, “I have retained you to advise me as to my legal rights. No one has to advise me as to my moral rights.”
“I tell you to hold it!” Mason said irritably.
Sergeant Holcomb said hopefully to Bedford, “This is your office. If you want him out, just say the word and we’ll put him out.”
“I don’t want him out,” Bedford said. “I simply want to state to you gentlemen that I did go to The Stay-longer Motel yesterday.”
“Now, that’s better!” Sergeant Holcomb said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Go right ahead.”
“Bedford,” Mason said, “you may think you’re doing the right thing, but—”
Sergeant Holcomb said, “Throw him out, boys, if he tries to interrupt. Go ahead, Bedford; you’ve got this on your chest and you’ll feel better when you get rid of it.”
“I was being blackmailed by this character Binney Denham,” Bedford said. “There is something in my past that I hoped never would come out Somehow Denham found out about it.”
“What was it?” Holcomb asked.
Mason tried to say something, then checked himself.
“A hit-and-run,” Bedford said simply. “It was six years ago. I had a few drinks. It was a dark, rainy night. It really wasn’t my fault and I was perfectly sober. This elderly woman in dark clothes was crossing the street. I didn’t see her until I was right on her. I hit her a solid smash. I knew the minute I had hit her there was nothing anyone could do for her. It threw her to the pavement with terrific force.”
“Where was this?” Sergeant Holcomb asked.
“Out on Figueroa Street, six years ago. The woman’s name was Sara Biggs. You can find out all about her in the accident records.
“As I say, I’d had a few drinks, I know very well what I can do and I can’t do when I’m drinking. I never drive a car if I’m sufficiently under the influence of liquor to have it affect my driving in the slightest. This accident wasn’t due in any way to the few cocktails I’d had, but I knew that I did have liquor on my breath. There was nothing that could be done for the woman. The street was, at the moment, free of traffic. I just kept on going.
“I made it a point to check up on the accident in the papers. The woman had been killed instantly. I tell you, gentlemen, it was her own fault. She was crossing the street on a dark, rainy night in between intersections. Heaven knows what she was trying to do! She was out there in the street and that’s all. As I learned afterwards, she was an elderly woman. She was dressed entirely in black. I didn’t know all of these things at the time. All I knew was that I had been drinking and had hit someone and that it had been her fault. However, I’d had enough liquor so I knew I’d be the goat if I’d stopped.”
“Okay,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “So you beat it. You made a hit-and-run. This guy Denham found out about it. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“What did he do?”
“He waited for some time before he put the bite on me,” Bedford said. “Then he showed up with a demand that I—”
“When?” Holcomb interrupted.
“Three days ago,” Bedford said.
“You hadn’t know him before that?”
“That was the first time in my life I ever met the slimy little rascal. He had this apologetic manner. He told me that he hated to do it, but he needed money and … well, he told me to get twenty thousand dollars in traveler’s checks, and that was all there’d be to it.
“Then he told me he had to keep me out of circulation while the checks were being cashed. That was when he showed up yesterday morning. He had a blonde woman with him who gave the name of Geraldine Corning. She had a car parked in front of the building. I don’t know how they’d secured that parking space, but the car was right in front of the door. Miss Corning drove me around until we were certain we weren’t being followed; then she told me to pick out a good-looking motel and drive in.”
“You picked out the motel or she did?” Sergeant Holcomb asked.
“I did.”
“All right. What happened?”
“We saw the sign of The Staylonger Motel. I suggested that we go in there. It was all right with her. I was already paying blackmail on one charge and I didn’t propose to have them catch me on some kind of frame-up with a woman. I told the manager, Mr. Brems—the gentleman standing over there who has just identified me—that I expected another couple to join us and therefore wanted a double unit. He said I could do better by waiting until the other couple showed up and letting them pay for the second unit. I told him I’d pay the entire price and take both units.”
“Then what?”
“I put Miss Corning in one unit. I stayed in the other. The door was open between the units. I tried to keep rigidly to myself, but it became too boring. We played cards. We had a drink. We went out for a drive. We stopped in a tavern. We had a very fine afternoon meal. We returned and had another drink. That drink was drugged. I went to sleep. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“Okay,” Sergeant Holcomb said, “you’re doing so good. Why not tell us about the gun?”
“I will tell you about the gun,” Bedford said. “I had never been blackmailed in my life. It made me furious to think of doing business on that kind of a basis. I … I had a gun in my study. I took that gun and put it in my brief case.”
“Go on,” Holcomb said.
“I tell you the last drink I had was drugged.”
“What time was that?”
“Sometime in the afternoon.”
“Three o’clock? Four o’clock?”
“Probably four. I can’t give you the exact hour. It was still daylight.”
“How do you know it was drugged?”
“I could tell. I have never been able to sleep during the day. However, after I took this drink I couldn’t focus my eyes. I saw double. I tried to get up and couldn’t. I fell back on the bed and went to sleep.”
“This blonde babe drugged the drink?” Sergeant Holcomb asked.
“I rather think that someone else had entered the motel during our absence and drugged the bottle from which the liquor was poured,” Bedford said. “Miss Corning seemed to feel the effects before I did. She was sitting in a chair and she went to sleep while I was still awake. In fact, as I remember it, she went to sleep right in the middle of a conversation.”
“They sometimes put on an act like that,” Holcomb said. “It keeps the sucker from becoming suspicious. She dopes the drink, then pretends she’s sleepy first. It’s an old gag.”
“Could be,” Bedford said. “I’m just telling you what I know.”
“Okay,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “How did it happen you used this gun? I take it the guy showed up and—”
“I didn’t use the gun,” Bedford said positively. “I had the gun in my brief case. When I awakened, which was sometime at night, the gun was gone.”
“So what did you do?” Holcomb asked skeptically.
“I became panic-stricken when I found the body of Binney Denham in that other unit in the motel. I took my brief case and my hat and went out through the back. I crawled through the barbed wire fence—”
“You tore your clothes?” Holcomb asked.
“I tore the knee of my pants, yes.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I walked across the lot to the road.”
“And then what?”
“Then I managed to get a ride,” Bedford said. “I think, gentlemen, that covers the situation.”
“He was killed with your gun?” Sergeant Holcomb asked.
“How do I know?” Bedford said. “I have told you my story, gentlemen. I am not accustomed to having my word questioned. I am not going to submit myself to a lot of browbeating cross-questioning. I have told you the absolute truth.”
“What did you do with the gun?” Sergeant Holcomb said. “Come on, Bedford, you’ve told us so much you might as well make a clean breast of it. After all, the guy was a blackmailer. He was putting the bite on you. There’s a lot to be said on your side. You knew that if you started paying you were going to have to keep on paying. You took the only way out, so you may as well tell us what you did with the gun.”
“I have told you the truth,” Bedford said.
“Nuts!” Sergeant Holcomb observed. “Don’t expect us to believe a cock-and-bull story like that. Why did you take the gun in the first place if you didn’t intend to use it?”
“I tell you I don’t know. I presume I thought I might intimidate the man by telling him I had paid once, but that I wouldn’t pay again. I probably had a rather nebulous idea that if I showed him the gun and told him I’d kill him if he ever tried to shake me down again, it might help get me off the hook as far as future payments were concerned. Frankly, gentlemen, I don’t know. I never did make any really definite plan. I acted on impulse, some feeling of—”
“Yeah, I know,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “I know all about it Come on through with the truth now. What did you do with the gun after the shooting? Tell us that and then you’ll have got it all off your chest.”
Bedford shook his head. “I have told you all I know. Someone took my gun out of my brief case while I was sleeping.”
Holcomb looked at the plain-clothes officer, said to Bedford, “Okay. We’ll go talk with the D.A. You pay for the cab.”
Holcomb turned to Mason. “You and your habeas corpus,” he said. “This is one case that backfired on you. How do you like your client now, wise guy?”
Mason said, “Don’t be silly. If Bedford had been going to shoot Denham, why didn’t he do it before he paid the twenty thousand and save himself that much money?”
Sergeant Holcomb frowned for a moment, then said, “Because he didn’t have the opportunity before he paid. Anyhow, he’s smart. It would be worth twenty grand to him to give you that talking point in front of a jury.
“It’s your question, Mason, and the D.A. will let you try to answer it yourself in front of the jury. I’ll be there listening.
“Come on, Bedford. You’re going places where even Perry Mason can’t get you out. That statement of yours gives us all we need.
“Call the cab. We leave Mason here.”