Free The Case of the Caretaker's Cat by Erle Stanley Gardner

said, "What do we do next?"
    "We get in touch with the district attorney," Mason replied. "He's always claimed that a criminal lawyer uses his intelligence to keep murderers from paying the penalties of their crime. Now I'm going to fool him by showing him a perfect murder case I've uncovered, where his own men have fallen down on the job."
    "It seems like such a thin skeleton of evidence on which to hang a murder accusation," the detective objected.
    "There's nothing thin about it," Mason retorted. "Notice that the time was about quarter past ten at night. It had been dark for several hours. The garage doors were closed. Sam Laxter pretended he'd been drunk when he brought his car into the garage. But he must have left the car, gone to the sliding doors, closed them, and then climbed back in the car and kept the motor running. He must have attached the flexible tubing to his exhaust pipe and then must have arranged to feed it into the pipe which ran to his grandfather's room. Then all he had to do was to start the motor. Probably he didn't need to keep it running very long. If I remember my forensic medicine correctly, the exhaust gas of motor cars produces carbon monoxide at the rate of one cubic foot per minute per twenty horsepower. The average garage can be filled with deadly fumes in five minutes from running an ordinary automobile. Exposure to an atmosphere containing as little as two-tenths of one percent of the gas will cause a fatal result in time. The post mortem indications are a bright, cherry-red blood. The gas affects the blood so that it can't distribute oxygen to the tissues, and these indications are customarily found in the blood of one who has died in a burning house.
    "We'll hand it to Samuel C. Laxter for being damned clever. If it hadn't been for the fortuitous circumstances of that nurse happening on him, he'd have committed a perfect murder."
    "You're putting this whole thing in the hands of the district attorney?" Drake ventured, his eyes rolling toward Perry Mason, his face utterly devoid of expression.
    "Yes."
    "Hadn't you better find out just where your client stands in this thing first?"
    Mason said slowly, "No, I don't think so. If my client has done wrong, I'm not going to try and shield him. I'm employed to see that he keeps his cat, and, by God, he's going to keep that cat. If he's found money that belongs to the estate and has embezzled it, that's an entirely different matter. And don't overlook the fact that Pete Laxter may have made a valid gift of that money to Ashton before his death."
    "Baloney," the detective remarked. "Pete Laxter didn't expect to die; therefore, there was no reason for him to give away his money."
    "Don't be to too certain," Mason said. "He had some reason for turning his property into cash. But let's quit speculating about that, Paul. The main thing in handling a lawsuit is to keep the other man's client on the defensive, not to get yours in a position where he has to do a lot of explaining. However, I'll give Ashton a buzz and tell him that I think his cat is safe."
    The detective laughed. "Talk about using a ten-gauge shotgun to kill a canary," he said, "we certainly are getting into a lot of ramifications in order to keep a cat alive."
    "And," Mason said, "in order to show Nat Shuster that he can't cut corners with me and get away with it. Don't forget that angle, Paul."
    "There's a public telephone in the drugstore around the corner," Drake said.
    "Okay, Paul, let's telephone Ashton and telephone the district attorney."
    They strolled around the corner. Mason dropped a dime in, dialed the number listed under the name of Peter Laxter, and asked for Charles Ashton. It took several minutes before he heard Ashton's rasping voice on the telephone.
    "This is Perry Mason talking, Ashton. I don't think you need to worry any more about Clinker."
    "Why not?" Ashton asked.
    "I think that Sam Laxter is going to have his hands full," Mason explained. "I think he'll be kept