The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

“Then Sally didn’t have any occasion to open her purse from the time you first saw her until she got into bed and tucked it under her pillow?”

“That’s right. I remember thinking at the time that she should take more care of her skin, but she just got out of her clothes and climbed into bed.”

Mason said, “Of course she didn’t want you to have any opportunity to see what was in the purse. All right, Della, there’s only one thing to do. We’ve got to get that gun out of the purse.”

“Why?”

Mason said, “Because it’s got your fingerprints on it.”

“Oh, oh!” Della Street exclaimed in dismay. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“After we get your fingerprints off of it,” Mason said, “we’re going to wake Sally Madison up and ask her some questions. What we do after that depends on the answers, but probably we’re going to tell her to go back to her apartment, act just as though nothing had happened, and under no circumstances say anything to anyone about having spent the night here in the hotel.”

“Think she’ll do it?”

“You can’t tell. She may. The probabilities are they’ll pick her up before noon. Then if they ask her a lot of questions, she’ll probably drag us into the mess. But if your fingerprints aren’t on that gun, we don’t have to tell anyone that we knew what was in her purse. We were simply keeping her out of the way of the newspaper reporters. She was going to be our client in a civil action we were about to bring against the Faulkner Estate in order to collect five thousand dollars for her boy friend.”

Della Street nodded.

“But,” Mason went on, “if your fingerprints are found on that gun, then we’re in an awful mess.”

“But when you take my fingerprints off the gun, won’t you automatically remove all fingerprints that are on it?”

Mason nodded. “That’s one of the things we’ve got to do, Della.”

“Doesn’t that consist of tampering with evidence or something of the sort?”

Mason said, “We don’t even know that it’s evidence, Della. It may or may not be the gun with which Harrington Faulkner was killed. Okay, here we go.”

Mason opened the bathroom door, paused for a whispered word of caution to Della Street, and had taken one step toward the bed where Sally Madison was sleeping, when knuckles pounded loudly on the door of the room.

Mason stopped in dismay.

“Open up!” a voice called. “Open up in there,” and knuckles once more banged on the panels of the door.

The noise aroused Sally Madison. With a half-articulate exclamation, she sat up in bed, threw one leg out from under the covers, then in the dim light of the room saw Perry Mason standing motionless by the doorway.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you were here,” and promptly grabbed the covers up to her chin and pulled her leg back into the bed.

“I just came,” Mason said.

She smiled. “I’m sleeping in the altogether.”

“So Della told me.”

“I didn’t hear you come.”

“I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

“What’s happening? Who’s at the door?”

Mason said to Della Street, “Open it, Della.”

Della Street opened the door.

The night clerk said, “You can’t pull that stuff here.”

“What stuff?” Della Street asked.

The man said, “Don’t pull that line on me. Your boy friend went up to the fifth floor with the elevator, then sneaked up the stairs to the sixth floor. He thought he was being smart. I happened to remember that you’d put through a call from this room and thought I’d give it the once-over. I was listening outside the door. I heard the bathroom door open and heard you two whispering. This isn’t the sort of a place you girls think it is. Get your things together and get out.”

Mason said, “You’re making a mistake, Buddy.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. You’re the one that’s making the mistake.”

Mason’s hand slid enticingly down into his right-hand trouser pocket. “All right,” he said, laughing, “perhaps I’m the one that’s made the mistake, but it’s getting daylight and it isn’t going to hurt the hotel any if the girls check out after breakfast.” Mason pulled out a roll of bills, peeled a ten-dollar bill from the roll, held it between his first and second fingers so the night clerk could get a good look at the denomination of the bill.

The man didn’t even lower his eyes. “No, you don’t,” he said. “That sort of stuff doesn’t go here.”

Mason glanced over to where Sally Madison was holding the sheet up under her chin. He noticed that she had taken advantage of the diversion to retrieve her purse from its position on the floor. It was now safely tucked out of sight under her pillow.

Mason pushed the bills back into his pocket, took out his card case, produced one of his cards. “I’m Perry Mason, the lawyer,” he said. “This is Della Street. She’s my secretary.”

The clerk said doggedly, “She’d have to be your wife to let you get by with this, and that’s final. We’re trying to run a decent place here. We’ve had trouble with the police before, and I’m not going to take any chances on having any more trouble.”

Mason said angrily, “All right. We’ll get out.”