Read Online The Case of the Troubled Trustee by Erle Stanley Gardner - Free Book Online

inch in height, weight two hundred and five pounds, very hairy hands, big powerful wrists."
    "No keys on him?" Mason asked.
    "No keys, no coins, no knife, no handkerchiefs, no pens, no pencils-nothing."
    Mason said thoughtfully, "Paul, you talked about a man you thought was a process server who was waiting to serve papers on Dutton?"
    "That's right, he- By George, Perry, it could be the same man. The description fits."
    "You'd recognize the man if you saw him?"
    "Sure."
    "Stay away from the morgue," Mason said. "Let's see if you can get a look at the police photographs."
    "Gosh, Perry," Drake wailed, "if I make the guy, I'll have to go to the police. That's evidence a private detective can't withhold."
    "You can't make a positive identification from a newspaper photograph like that," Mason said. "You'd have to see the corpse."
    "Well, you were talking about police photographs."
    "I was," Mason said. "Now I am talking about newspaper photographs… Della and I are on our way back just as fast as we can get there. I'll leave my car here. I'll get my friend Munoz to fly us to San Diego. You have Pinky waiting at the San Diego airport with a twin-motored job to bring us in to the Tn-City Airport, and sit tight until we get there. Meet us at Tn-City Airport."
    "Even if there's a very good resemblance in the newspaper photographs, I'd have to run it down," Drake said. "In a murder case my license wouldn't be worth a thin dime if I held out an identification."
    "You and your license," Mason said.
    "Me and my living," Drake told him. "I'll have the plane in San Diego by the time you get there."
    "We'll get there pretty darn fast," Mason said and hung up.

Chapter Ten
    "Pinky" Brier, the famous aviatrix, brought the twinmotored plane in at the Tn-City Airport as gracefully as a bird coming in to a landing.
    A worried Paul Drake, who had been anxiously waiting, came out of the late afternoon shadows to meet Perry Mason and Della Street as they disembarked.
    "You left your car?" Drake asked.
    "Left it down there," Mason said. "We'll get it later on. Right now we're working against time."
    "We're working against time and against a condition you aren't going to like," Drake said.
    "What's the condition?"
    "I've seen the photograph in the papers."
    "What about it?"
    "Perry, I thinkthat man is the one that I took for a process server-perhaps he is, perhaps he isn't, but in any event, he was hanging around keeping cases on this Dutton apartment."
    "But you can't make a positive identification from a newspaper photograph of that sort," Mason said.
    "I know I can't, but I've got enough of an identification to tell Lieutenant Tragg that I might be of some assistance and should go down to the morgue and take a look at the body."
    "Then, if you identify him," Mason said, "you're going to have to tell Tragg where you saw him and when."
    "That's right."
    "And that," Mason said, "is going to put our client in a hole."
    "Your client is in a hole now," Drake said.
    "Well, you'll put him deeper in the hole."
    "He's in just about as deep as he can get right now," Drake said, "or he will be when my operative testifies.
    "You remember my operative was shadowing Dutton. He put a wire recorder up against the telephone booth and heard one side of the conversation in which Dutton arranged to meet someone out at the Barclay Country Club on the seventh tee.
    "That's where they found this murdered man." Mason said thoughtfully, "Your operative is in Ensenada now?"
    "No, he's started home," Drake said. "By the time he gets here he'll know what his duty is. He'll report to the police, and the police will confiscate that wire recording."
    "Who has the wire recording?"
    "He does. It's in the trunk of his car.
    "You've got a responsibility here, too, Perry. You can't suppress evidence. You can represent your client regardless of what the evidence against him may be, but you can't conceal evidence of a murder."
    "All right," Mason said, "let's face it before they smoke