The Case of the Stuttering Bishop Read Online Free PDF Page B

exaggerated grimace and said, "Think of how Paul Drake's going to rub it into me. I figured we could get farther by giving her plenty of rope, and I was foolish enough to think I could tell when she was lying and when she was telling us the truth."
    "You figured she was telling the truth about the ad?"
    "I thought so, yes. Perhaps not the whole truth, but enough of it to give us a line on what was happening."
    "What gave you that idea?" she asked.
    "Well," Mason said slowly, "you know how it is when people lie at high speed without having any chance to make things up beforehand. They'll try to follow the truth as far as possible and then figure some falsehood which will link one batch of truth with another batch of truth. There's a certain tempo that gets in their voices when they're running along over ground they're certain of, and then they slow down a bit when they're thinking up the connecting links. I figured this ad business was on the square."
    Mason got to his feet and started pacing the office floor, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, his head tilted slightly forward. "The hell of it is," he said, "Paul Drake wanted to get rough. He figured we could get somewhere getting her frightened. He might have been right. But you know how red-heads are. And this one looked able to take care of herself. I figured she'd flare up and start fighting until she got hysterical. I felt certain we'd stand more chance giving her plenty of rope and being kind to her than we would by going after her, hammer and tongs."
    The telephone rang. Della Street, with her eyes still on one of the newspapers, groped for the receiver, found it and said, "Perry Mason's office," then extended the receiver toward the lawyer. "Paul Drake on the line," she said.
    Mason picked up the receiver and said, "Hello, Paul. What's new?"
    Drake's drawling voice showed a trace of excitement. "I've got the dope on that manslaughter for you, Perry," he said. "At least I'm hoping it's the right dope. A woman and a man had been down to Santa Ana getting married. They were on their way back to Los Angeles. The woman was driving. She'd had a few drinks. She ran into a car driven by an old rancher, a chap who was in the late seventies. Now, here's the funny thing about it: Nothing much was done at the time. They took the woman's name and address. The man died a couple of days later. But it wasn't until four months after that a warrant was filed for the arrest of the woman on a manslaughter charge. That looks sort of fishy on the face of it."
    "Who was the woman?"
    "She had been Julia Branner," Drake said, "but at the moment she was Mrs. Oscar Brownley. And in case you don't know it, Oscar Brownley was the son of Renwold C. Brownley."
    Mason gave a low whistle and said, "Wasn't there some sort of scandal about that marriage, Paul?"
    "Remember," Drake said, "that was back in 1914. Brownley made nearly all of his money on the big bull market and was wise enough to get out and duck out just before the crash in '29. Brownley in 1914 was dabbling around in real estate. Twelve years later he was a millionaire."
    "Couldn't they have arrested the woman easily enough if they'd really wanted her?" Mason asked.
    "No. She and Oscar had a fight with the old man and went places. About a year later, Oscar came back. The old man had turned some good real estate deals in the meantime. He rode the crest of the subdivision wave, then switched into the stock market, made a killing, and got out."
    "Where's Oscar now? Didn't he die?"
    "That's right. He died two or three years ago."
    "He left a daughter, didn't he?"
    "Yes. There's something more or less mysterious about that daughter. You know, Renwold was all wrapped up in Oscar. It wasn't until after Oscar died that he was willing to recognize the granddaughter. You see, he'd bitterly disapproved of the marriage, and apparently figured the daughter was a mistake on the part of the mother, rather than any offspring of his son. Two