The Case of the Dangerous Dowager by Erle Stanley Gardner Page B

chair."
    "What was he doing?"
    "Looking at a magazine."
    "You don't know what he was reading?"
    "No, I don't. He made some remark about the magazine being an old one. I can't remember just what it was."
    "The door to the inner office was locked?"
    "Yes."
    "You had a key for it?"
    "Yes."
    "Were there any other keys?"
    "Only the one Grieb had."
    "The one we found on his key ring?"
    "Yes."
    "It was customary to keep this door locked?"
    "Absolutely. That was one rule we never violated. This door was kept closed, locked and barred at all times."
    "So that Mr. Grieb, himself, must have opened this door?"
    "Yes."
    "And then returned to his desk, after admitting some visitor?"
    "That's right."
    "Now, there's no way of reaching that inner office, except through this door; is that right?"
    "That's right."
    "How about the porthole?" Mason asked. "There's a porthole directly over the desk, and another on either side. Wouldn't it have been possible for someone to have lowered himself down the side of the ship and fired a shot…"
    "No," the sergeant interrupted, "it would have been impossible. Excluding a theory of suicide, which the evidence won't support, the person who fired the fatal shot must have stood near the corner of Grieb's desk, and shot him with a.38 caliber automatic. Moreover, the empty shell was ejected and was found on the floor." He turned back to Duncan. "You opened the door to the inner office," he said, "and found Grieb's body in the chair. Then what did you do?"
    "I was pretty excited," Duncan said. "Naturally, it knocked me for a loop. I remember going over to make certain he was dead, and then I said something to Mason and… Oh, yes, we looked around for a gun. There was some question about whether it was suicide."
    "Do you remember anything else?"
    Duncan shook his head and said, "No. We came on out. Mason was making a few wise-cracks. I wanted him searched…"
    "Why did you want him searched?"
    "Because he'd been sitting here in the office. Naturally I was suspicious… That is, I thought it would be a good idea to search him and see if perhaps he had a key to that door, or a gun, or… Well, he might have had a lot of things in his pockets."
    "Did Mason object to being searched?"
    "On the contrary," Mason interrupted, smiling, "I demanded it. Mr. Perkins, an officer who came aboard with Mr. Duncan, handcuffed me, so I couldn't take anything from my pockets, took me into another room, had me undress, and searched me from the skin out. But Mr. Duncan was alone with the body for several minutes."
    "No, I wasn't," Duncan retorted angrily. "And that reminds me of something else I did. I pushed the alarm button which called Manning. That button sounds buzzers in various places and turns on a red light in all four corners of the gambling room. Manning came in here within a matter of seconds."
    "That's right," the blue-coated special officer corroborated. "I was over at the far corner of the casino, watching a man who looked like a crook. He was rolling dice on the crap table, and he was pretty lucky. Most of the time I hang around by the entrance to these offices, but when I see something that looks suspicious, I go give it the once-over. As a matter of fact, Grieb had given me the tip-off on this guy, himself. That was about fifteen or twenty minutes before Duncan put on the lights for me. I saw the light come on and started for the office. It couldn't have been fifteen seconds until I got there."
    "During that fifteen seconds did you see anyone leave the offices?" the sergeant asked.
    "Sure. I saw Perry Mason, and this officer who came aboard with Mr. Duncan – Perkins, I think his name was. They tell me that he put handcuffs on Mr. Mason, but I couldn't see the handcuffs. The way they strolled out, arm in arm, I thought they were just buddies, going into the bar to get a drink."
    "You saw us leave?"
    "I wasn't over six feet from you. You'd have seen me if you'd turned around. I was moving pretty fast. I thought