The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

The uniformed officer who sat there, stolidly puffing away at a cigar, said, “It won’t be long now. Take it easy.”

Mason said angrily, “I don’t like being treated this way.”

“I suppose you don’t.”

“You’d think we had committed the murder.”

“You could have, couldn’t you? There wasn’t anyone else in the house.”

“Oh, bunk!” Mason said.

There was silence for several seconds.

“This business of putting my secretary in one room, me in another, my client in a third, holding us all where we can’t get in touch with each other — that’s cheap theatrical stuff as far as I’m concerned.”

“Well,” the officer said, puffing away at the cigar, “it’s orders as far as I’m concerned. What do you think of the Giants?”

“Doing all right,” Mason said.

“Uh-huh. The Dodgers is quite a team.”

“Uh-huh,” Mason said.

The officer smoked with that air of complete detachment which indicated that the only hour on the clock which meant anything to him was the time at which he would be off duty. Aside from that he took things as they came. He had been instructed to sit in this room with Perry Mason and keep him from communicating with anyone, and he was making himself as comfortable as possible while he was carrying out his orders.

“Who’s the mastermind that gave these orders?” Mason asked.

The officer hesitated a moment, turned the cigar in his mouth, inspected the end of it to make certain it was drawing evenly, and said, “Sergeant Holcomb.”

“Well,” Mason said, “my time’s valuable. My automobile is out there with the motor running and the lights on.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s right downstairs. You don’t need to tell anybody I told you, but you can quit worrying about your automobile.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said. “I’ll drive it home then.”

The officer grinned.

“Good Lord!” Mason said. “You don’t mean they’re going to impound that for evidence too.”

“The boys are going over it,” the officer told him. “Maybe they’ll be done by the time you get out of here. Maybe they won’t.”

Mason said angrily, “That’s what I get for instructing my secretary to call the police.”

“No,” the officer said, “that’s what you get for finding so damn many bodies. You get around too much. According to the way the Sarge thinks about it, you should stay in your office and let people come to you. You always get out on the firing line some place, and seem to have a knack for being around about the time somebody gets bumped off.

“You know, when it comes to pennant winning I like a team that has the old power house. You get fellows that can bunch their hits and that’s what counts. Funny the way some teams are like that. Some just scatter their hits all through the game; and then you can take a power house gang that’s playing along just ordinary baseball, and all of a sudden somebody sparks a play, and the next thing you know the whole team is going crazy, batting pitchers out of the box, slamming balls all over the diamond. They bring in a fistfull of runs and then they settle down. They can afford to. They’ve got the game won.”

Mason said wearily, “Runs are what win a ball game.”

“You said it, buddy. Now you take the Giants. Ever since Durocher got in there the team is like a unit. You can figure everything is teamwork. They’ll play machine-precision baseball until something happens to give them a break, and then they pounce on that break like nobody’s business. They...”

The door opened.

A tall, affable, good-looking man in plain clothes, stood on the threshold smiling at Perry Mason.

Mason got up out of his chair and said, “Well, well, Lieutenant Tragg himself. This is a pleasure. I thought I was going to have a session with Sergeant Holcomb’s bull-necked stupidity.”

Lieutenant Tragg shook hands. “You shouldn’t run down one officer to a brother officer, Mason,” he said. “Sergeant Holcomb is busy interviewing — others.”

“I hope he isn’t using his tact and diplomacy on Della Street,” Mason said.

Lieutenant Tragg walked over to the table and sat down.

“All right, Mason,” he said, “what’s the story?”

The door opened. A plain-clothes man with a shorthand notebook came in, sat down at the table, opened the notebook, took a fountain pen from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, shifted his position in the chair as though trying to get his hips and elbows in just the right place, then nodded to Lieutenant Tragg.

“You can begin at the beginning,” Lieutenant Tragg said to Mason.

“In the beginning,” Mason said. “Della Street and I were in my office. The switchboard kept clattering away. It’s rather annoying. Ordinarily we wouldn’t answer calls at night, and ordinarily we wouldn’t have any calls. But we took the call. Somebody asked us to go out to Benjamin Addicks’ place.”

“Someone?” Tragg said.

“That’s right.”

“Who was someone?”

“I didn’t recognize the voice myself,” Mason said, “not well enough to swear to it.”

“Well, you’ve got your opinion, haven’t you?”

“I thought you wanted evidence.”

“Are you going to be difficult, Mason?”

“No, just cautious.”