The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

“That’s right. Somebody pushed a carving knife down between his shoulder blades some time this evening, and the police are holding a client of mine, a Josephine Kempton, for questioning.”

“What do you want to know about Addicks?”

“Everything.”

“What do you want to know about the murder?”

“Everything.”

Drake said sarcastically, “I suppose you want me to have it all ready by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“You’re wrong,” Mason told him. “I want it by eight-thirty,” and hung up.

Chapter number 11

Promptly at 8:30 Mason stopped by the Drake Detective Agency, which had offices on the same floor as Mason’s law offices.

“Paul in?” he asked the girl at the switchboard.

“He’s in,” she said, “and waiting for you, Mr. Mason.”

“Okay,” Mason said, “tell him to come on down to my office. I have an appointment at nine, and Della Street said she was going to be there at eight-thirty.”

Mason went on down to his office and found Della Street waiting.

“Hello, Della. Been here long?”

“About ten minutes.”

“You had a pretty hard day yesterday.”

“I had? You’re the one who had a hard day, playing tag with gorillas. Did you have nightmares?”

Mason grinned. “I didn’t have nightmares, but I had the devil of a time getting to sleep. There’s something about those gorillas — they give you something to think of when they start looking at you and beating themselves on the chest.”

“I’ll say. Is Paul Drake coming in?”

“Uh-huh. I stopped in and left word. See if you can get Homicide on the line for me, Della. We’ll put it up to Lieutenant Tragg and find out what he wants to do.”

Della Street rang police headquarters and found that Lieutenant Tragg was not in his office.

“Try Sergeant Holcomb,” Mason said.

“You know how he hates you,” Della Street warned.

“That’s all right,” Mason told her. “We’ll see what Holcomb has to say. I want information.”

A moment later Della Street nodded. Mason picked up the telephone.

“Hello,” Mason said, “I wanted to get some information about a client of mine, Sergeant.”

“What do you want?”

Mason said, “I want to know whether I’m going to have to get a writ of habeas corpus on Josephine Kempton, or whether you’re going to turn her loose.”

“She’s loose.”

“She is? I haven’t heard anything of it.”

“Well, you will. She was released about half an hour ago. I tried your office and got no answer. You don’t have your residence telephone listed in the book. You’re exclusive. Mrs. Kempton didn’t know where it was, and I didn’t know where it was. Her other attorney, James Etna, had a phone listed. I telephoned him. He said he wanted to come by and pick her up.”

“So you released her,” Mason said.

“That’s right.”

“Then she’s no longer under suspicion?”

“Who said she ever was under suspicion?”

“All right,” Mason said wearily, “I guess that’s that.”

He hung up.

Della Street raised her eyebrows.

“Holcomb says she’s been released,” Mason reported.

Paul Drake gave his code knock at the door.

Della Street opened the door.

“You guys,” Paul Drake said, “fresh as daisies, aren’t you? Had a nice sleep, I suppose. Look at me. I’m groggy. Filled with equal parts of coffee and information.”

“That’s fine,” Mason told him. “Sit down. Keep the coffee, give us the information.”

Paul Drake, a tall, cadaverous, solemn-looking individual, whose eyes had been trained by years of poker-faced observation to show no flicker of expression, assumed his favorite position in the big, overstuffed, leather chair, his long legs hanging over one rounded chair arm, the other arm supporting his back.

He yawned prodigiously, pulled a notebook from his pocket and said, “I suppose you want me to begin at the beginning.”

“That’s right.”

“Benjamin Addicks,” Paul Drake said in a drawl, “said to be fifty-two years old. He’s supposed to have a younger brother Herman Addicks, forty-six. The two were inseparable. They didn’t have any great amount of formal education, came from a poor family.

“Herman dropped out of sight. Benjamin claimed he didn’t have any idea where Herman was. That may have been true. Rumor is that Herman got in a fight and killed someone, and...”

“Snap out of it, Paul,” Mason interrupted sharply. “You’re a detective. What do you care about all the rumor stuff? I want facts. What do you know?”

Drake said, “Actually, Perry, not a damned thing. Addicks is a millionaire. He goes for mining deals in a big way. He’s been here for sixteen years. Before that no one knows a damn thing about him, where he came from, when or how he got his money.”

Mason said incredulously, “You mean his banks don’t know?”

“I mean no one knows. He always refused to answer any question. He’d say, ‘I am asking for no credit at any time. I buy and I sell in hard cash.’ ”

“But, good heavens, Paul, how about the income tax people?”

“He told them he had amnesia. The first thing he remembered was being here, waking up in a hotel with about two thousand dollars on him.”

“Did they believe any such yarn as that, Paul?”