The D.A. Breaks an Egg

Erle Stanley Gardner The D.A. Breaks an Egg

Foreword

While the closing chapters of this book were bring dictated, I was working with Dr. LeMoyne Snyder on the investigation of a real murder fully as mysterious as any I have chronicled in fiction.

Dr. Snyder is the author of Homicide Investigation, generally conceded to be one of the most authoritative textbooks in the field of legal medicine. He is both a lawyer and a doctor. During the past four or five years we have been more or less intimately associated in the investigation of four homicides. I have learned to know him both as a friend and a criminologist. An outstanding medicolegal expert, he is a clever lawyer and a skillful physician and surgeon.

In company with Leonarde Keeler, the famous Polygraph expert who has done so much to perfect the so-called lie detector and elevate it to a position where it is now an invaluable tool in the hands of the criminologist, Dr. Snyder worked on the famous German Crown Jewel case. Not only has Dr. Snyder solved many mysteries, but his knowledge of anatomy and bloodstains enabled him to clear up a homicide in which I was interested. This was one of the cases of the “Court of Last Resort” where Raymond Schindler, the great detective, Dr. LeMoyne Snyder, Leonarde Keeler and I have been working in connection with Argosy magazine to reexamine cases of penniless men who have been wrongfully convicted of homicide.

It was while I was working on this book that Rabbi Joshua S. Sperka of Detroit appealed to us on behalf of a broken, penniless Jewish prisoner who has now served some seventeen years of a life sentence for murder. Our preliminary investigation indicates that this man may well be innocent, makes it seem almost certain that sinister influences may well have helped bring about his conviction and have since gone to great lengths to keep his case from being investigated.

Since Dr. Snyder is one of the instructors at the seminars of Homicide Investigation which are sponsored by that remarkable character Captain (Mrs.) Frances G. Lee at the Harvard Medical School, and since I was to attend the next seminar, Dr. Snyder and I investigated this strange murder case, and then drove on to Boston together. While we traveled, I dictated the closing chapters of this book.

The more intimately I am associated with Dr. Snyder the more I respect and admire him. I have now attended two seminars at the Harvard Medical School where he was one of the instructors. I have heard him lecture in the classrooms of Michigan State College, and I have worked with him in the field on two homicides and consulted with him on two others.

He is a modest man. His professional cards as a member of the bar contain no reference to the fact that he is also a physician and surgeon. Only those who have made some study of criminology and homicide investigation know the vast scope of Dr. Snyder’s text-book. Intended primarily as a book of instruction for police officers and detectives, it has far exceeded that original scope and has become one of the most widely referred to reference books in the field. Only those who have worked with Dr. Snyder know how invaluable is his highly specialized knowledge, his wide experience, his keen observation.

And so I dedicate this mystery of fiction to that expert solver of mysteries in real life, my friend,

LEMOYNE SNYDER, M.D., LL.B.

1

P. L. Paden paused briefly to light a cigar, then as though carrying out a carefully rehearsed operation, stalked importantly down the corridor of the Courthouse.

The “P. L.” stood for Phillip Lucillius, but his intimate associates insisted they meant “Powerful Lucky”; and Paden took great pains to encourage this nickname. It suited his purpose to encourage a belief that his various successes were the result of pure luck.

A paunchy, powerful man, he had, at the age of fifty-two, amassed a comfortable fortune which had so far served only to whet his financial appetite.

Paden pushed open the door marked DISTRICT ATTORNEY — ENTRANCE. A secretary glanced up from her desk, smiled impersonally, said, “Good morning.”

Without breaking the tempo of his stride, Paden detoured past her desk.

The secretary jumped up, and became momentarily entangled. Before she could extricate herself, Paden had his hand on the doorknob.

“You can’t go in there,” she said, running toward him. “That’s Mr. Selby’s private office.”

Paden pushed the door open.

Doug Selby, district attorney of Madison County, seated at the big desk with his back to the window, looked up. His secretary said almost hysterically, “He walked right in, Mr. Selby. He...”

Selby pushed the papers on which he had been working to one side, took in the situation with a glance, said, “That’s all right. He’s in here now... You’re Mr. Paden, I believe, the new owner of The Blade.”

“That’s right.”