The Case of the Velvet Claws   ::   Гарднер Эрл Стенли

“You saidyou left your purse up here. You’d better find it.”

She walked to the desk and opened one of the drawers. The purse was in that. She took it out. “How about the gun?” she asked. “Hadn’t we better do something with the gun?”

He followed her eyes, and saw an automatic lying on the floor, almost underneath the desk, where the shadows kept it from being plainly visible.

“No,” he said, “that’s a break for us. The police may be able to trace this gun, and find out who it belongs to.”

She frowned and said, “It seems funny that a man would shoot and then throw the gun down here. We don’t know who that gun belongs to. Don’t you think we had better do something with it?”

“Do what with it?”

“Hide it some place.”

“Do that,” he said, “and then you will have something to explain. Let the police find the gun.”

“I’ve got a lot of confidence in you, Perry,” she replied. “But I’d a lot rather have it the other way. Just the dead body here.”

“No,” he said, shortly. “You can remember everything I told you?”

“Yes.”

He picked up the telephone.

“Police Headquarters,” he said.



Chapter 9

Bill Hoffman, head of the Homicide Squad, was a big, patient man with slow, searching eyes, and a habit of turning things over and over in his mind before he reached a definite conclusion.

He sat in the living room on the downstairs floor of the Belter house and stared through his cigarette smoke at Perry Mason.

“The papers that we’ve found,” he said, “indicate that he was the real owner of Spicy Bits, the blackmailing sheet that’s been shaking them down during the last five or six years.”

Perry Mason spoke, slowly and cautiously, “I knew that, Sergeant.”

“How long have you known it?” asked Hoffman.

“Not very long.”

“How did you find out?”

“That’s something I can’t tell.”

“How did you happen to be here tonight before the police came?”

“You heard what Mrs. Belter said. That’s true. She called me. She was inclined to think that her husband might have lost his head, and shot the man who was calling on him. She didn’t know what had happened, and was afraid to go and find out.”

“Why was she afraid?” asked Hoffman.

Perry Mason shrugged his shoulders.

“You’ve seen the man,” he said, “and you know the type of a man it would take to run Spicy Bits.