The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

A watchman, a big deputy sheriff’s star pinned on his chest, a five-cell flashlight in his hand, a revolver holstered in a well-fitted cartridge belt, stood just behind the gates.

The beam of the flashlight pilloried the occupants of the car.

Mason rolled down the window.

“What do you want?” the watchman asked.

“The first thing I want,” Mason said, “is for you to take the beam of that flashlight out of my eyes.”

The flashlight wavered, then went off.

Mason said, “the next thing I want is to see Benjamin Addicks.”

“What I want to know,” the watchman said, “is whether Benjamin Addicks wants to see you.”

“He said he did.”

“What’s the name?”

“Perry Mason.”

“Wait right there,” the watchman said. “Now don’t get out of the car. Just wait right there until I telephone the house.”

He crossed over to a boxed-in telephone which was recessed in one of the square columns of masonry which supported the gates.

“Nice friendly people, aren’t they?” Mason said to Della Street.

“Well, perhaps he has to be. This is rather an isolated spot out here, Chief, and, after all, the man’s supposed to be wealthy. I presume he could be pestered with prowlers.”

The watchman hung up the telephone, and pressed a switch which started the ponderous gates swinging slowly back on well-oiled hinges.

The watchman came up to stand by the car on Mason’s side.

“All right,” he said, “he’s expecting you. Now you follow this gravel driveway all the way. When you come to the stone porch on the house with the big pillars, you drive right up to the stone steps and stop the car. There’ll be somebody there to meet you. Leave the car right there. Don’t stop before you get there, and don’t get off the graveled driveway. Understand?”

“I understand,” Mason said, “but I’m not particularly impressed with the cordiality of your welcome. What happens if we should get off the graveled driveway?”

“Plenty would happen.”

“Such as what?”

“Well, for one thing you’d find that you’d crossed beams of invisible light, and when you cross one of those beams all hell breaks loose. Sirens scream, floodlights turn on, and the doors of the kennels automatically open. That releases the police dogs. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you want to experiment, go ahead and find out.”

The watchman turned away.

Mason said to Della Street, “I guess Mr. Addicks has arranged for ample protection. Anything that he lacks in hospitality he seems to make up in efficiency.”

He eased the car into gear and slid through the gates, the tires crunching the gravel on the wide, sweeping driveway, which curved through landscaped grounds, which, to the uninitiated eyes, might seem to furnish plenty of opportunities for concealment.

After a few moments the big house loomed in front of them, a solid masonry affair that had its lines softened here and there by bits of ivy clinging to the stone.

Mason said, “All the soft, pleasing architecture of a state prison.”

He slid the car to a stop by the steps on the front porch.

A porch light came on to flood the place with brilliance. Somewhere in the back dogs were barking with savage insistence.

Mason switched off the motor and his headlights, opened the car door, and walked around to assist Della from the car. She opened the door and without waiting jumped to the steps leading to the porch and ran lightly up the stairs.

The big front door swung open and Nathan Fallon came out to greet them.

“Welcome to Stonehenge,” he said.

“Stonehenge?” Della Street exclaimed.

Fallon said, “That’s the name of the place. Rather a huge mansion, Miss Street. It has plenty of room for all of Mr. Addicks’ requirements. Room for entertaining, room for working, and room for his animal experimentation.”

“Can you tell me just what is the purpose of this animal experimentation that you refer to?” Mason asked.

Nathan Fallon didn’t bother any longer to keep up the front of smiling affability. He looked at Mason through his thick-lensed glasses in silent appraisal.

“No,” he said.

For a moment there was silence, then Nathan Fallon stepped back to indicate the door. “Won’t you come in?” he invited.

They entered a reception hall, which, with its ponderous, powerful architecture, still seemed to carry out the motif of a state prison.

Curtains parted from a doorway on the right, and a tall, slender individual stood there surveying them.

His eyes were slate gray, utterly without expression, and were so large that when he closed his eyelids the process seemed deliberately exaggerated as though one might have been looking at the eyes of an owl. The slow closing of the lids disclosed a distinct convexity of the big eyes, then the lids opened again like the shutters of twin studio cameras perpetuating a photographic image on film.

“Good evening,” the man said in a voice that somehow made the simple greeting a matter of slow, deliberate formality.

“This is Mortimer Hershey,” Nathan Fallon said, “Mr. Addicks’ business manager.”

“I take it,” Hershey said, “the young lady is Miss Street, and I have the honor to address Mr. Perry Mason.”