The Case of the Curious Bride by Erle Stanley Gardner Page A

booth. "Hello, Mason," he said.
    Rhoda Montaine reached for Perry Mason's hand, got to her feet. The newspaper men stared at her in surprise. "She was in there all the time?" asked one of the reporters.
    "Yes," Mason said. "Where's your car? You've got to rush her…"
    The second reporter rasped out an oath. "The cops," he said.
    Two men emerged from behind the low, glass-enclosed partition which separated the ticket office from the lobby. They came up on the run. "This," said Perry Mason, speaking rapidly, "is Rhoda Montaine. She surrenders to you gentlemen as representatives of the Chronicle, knowing that the Chronicle will give her a square deal. She has recognized the garage key which was published in the paper as the key to her garage. She…"
    The two detectives swooped down on the group. One of them grabbed Rhoda Montaine by the arm. The other pushed a face that was livid with rage up close to Mason's face. "So that's the kind of a dirty damn shyster you are, is it?" he said.
    Mason's jaw jutted forward. His eyes became steely. "Pipe down, gumshoe," he said, "or I'll button your lip with a set of knuckles."
    The other detective muttered a warning. "Take it easy, Joe. He's dynamite. We've got the girl. That's all the break we need."
    "You've got hell!" one of the reporters said. "This is Rhoda Montaine, and she surrendered to the Chronicle before you ever saw her."
    "Like hell she did. She's our prisoner. We tracked her here and made the arrest. We get the credit."
    One of the reporters moved toward the telephone booth. He grinned as he dropped a nickel and gave the number of the Chronicle. "In just about fifteen minutes," he said, "you boys can buy a paper on the street and read all about who gets the credit."

8.
    Perry Mason paced his office with the restlessness of a caged tiger.
    Gone was the patient air of philosophical contemplation which characterized many of his meditative indoor perambulations. He was now a grim fighter, and his restless walking furnished an outlet for excess physical energy, rather than a means of concentration. Paul Drake, the detective, a leather-backed notebook poised on his knee, took notes from time to time of the points of information Mason wanted uncovered. Della Street was seated at a corner of the desk, her stenographer's notebook under the tip of a poised pencil. She watched the lawyer with eyes bright with concentrated admiration. "They've buried her," Mason said, frowning at the silent telephone. "Damn them! They would work that trick on me."
    Paul Drake looked at his wristwatch. "Perhaps," he volunteered, "they…"
    "I tell you, they've buried her," Mason interrupted, his tongue savage. "I've arranged to be notified whenever she enters either headquarters or the district attorney's office. She's showed up at neither place. They've taken her to some outlying precinct." He flung about and snapped an order at Della Street. "Della," he said, "get to the files. Dig out the application for a writ of habeas corpus in the case of Ben Yee. Follow the allegations of that petition. I'll sign it as an attorney acting on behalf of the prisoner. Get one of the typists to rush it out. I'll slap them in the face with a habeas corpus. That'll smoke them into the open before they've got a chance to do too much damage."
    Della Street, swiftly efficient, vanished from the office. Perry Mason whirled toward the detective. "Another thing Paul," he said. "The district attorney is going to sew up the husband."
    "As a material witness?" Drake asked.
    "Either as a material witness or as an accomplice. Anyway, he'll sew him up so we can't get at him. We've got to figure some way of getting at him. I've got to reach that man." He paced the floor in savage silence.
    The detective volunteered a suggestion. "We could," he said, "fake a message that his father was ill in Chicago. They'd let him go to see his father if they thought you didn't know about it. It's a cinch he'd go by plane. We could watch the plane