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

telegram announcing that I have married Rhoda Lorton, the nurse who was employed on the case."
    "You didn't tell him you intended to marry her?"
    "No, I hardly knew, myself. It was one of those impulses."
    "Why didn't you become engaged to her and notify him of that?"
    "Because he would have objected. He would have made a great deal of trouble. I wanted to marry her more than I had ever wanted anything in the world. I knew that if I gave him any notice of my intentions, I could never carry them out. He would have discontinued my allowance, ordered me to come home, done almost anything."
    "Go ahead," Mason said.
    "Well, I married her. I wired my father. He was very nice about it. He was still working on the business deal I spoke of and couldn't leave. He wanted us to come to Chicago to visit him. But Rhoda didn't want to go right away. She wanted to wait a little while."
    "So you didn't go."
    "No, we didn't go."
    "Your father didn't like that?"
    "I don't think he liked it."
    "You wanted to tell me about a murder," Mason prompted.
    "Have you a morning paper here in the office?" Mason opened the drawer of his desk, took out the newspaper he had been reading when Della Street had announced Carl Montaine. "Turn to page three, please," Montaine said.
    Mason turned to the third page of the newspaper. The photograph of a key, reproduced in its exact size, appeared in the center of the third page. Below the picture appeared the words, "DID THE KILLER DROP THIS KEY?"
    Montaine took a leather key container from his pocket, detached a key, handed it to Perry Mason. "Compare them," he said.
    Mason held the key over the photograph, then placed the key on the other side of the paper, made a pencil tracing, slowly nodded his head. "How does it happen," he inquired, "that you have this key? I understood the police were holding it."
    Montaine shook his head and said, "Not this key. This is my key. The one that's pictured there is my wife's key. We've got duplicate keys to the garage and to the two automobiles. She dropped her keys when she…" His voice trailed into silence.
    He opened the leather key container, spread it on the desk and indicated the keys. "The door keys to the Chevrolet coupe and the Plymouth sedan. My wife usually drives the Chevrolet. I drive the sedan. But sometimes we change off, so, to simplify matters, we each have duplicate keys to the doors and then leave ignition keys right in the locks."
    "You've talked with your wife before coming here? She knows you're consulting me?"
    "No."
    "Why?"
    "I don't know just how to explain it so you'll understand."
    "I don't know how I can understand unless you do explain it."
    "I'd have to begin at the beginning and tell you the whole story."
    "I thought that's what you were doing."
    "I was trying to."
    "Well, go ahead."
    "She tried to drug me."
    "Tried to what?"
    "Tried to drug me."
    "Look here," Mason said, "where is she now?"
    "Home."
    "Does she know that you know about this?"
    Montaine shook his head.
    "Well, let's hear the story," Mason said impatiently.
    "It starts with when I came home from the hospital. That is, it really starts before that time. I had been very nervous. I started taking what I thought was a sedative. I didn't know it was habit-forming. It turned out it was habit-forming. My wife told me I must break it off. She got some Ipral to give me. She said that would help me cure myself."
    "What's Ipral?"
    "It's a hypnotic. That's what they call it."
    "What's a hypnotic? Is it habit-forming?"
    "It isn't habit-forming. It cures nervousness and insomnia. You can take two tablets and go to sleep and wake up in the morning without feeling dopey."
    "Do you take it all the time?"
    "No, of course not. That's the reason I took it, to quiet my nerves when I had one of those fits of nervous sleeplessness."
    "You say your wife tried to drug you?"
    "Yes. Last night my wife asked me if I would like some hot chocolate before I went to bed. She said she thought it would be good for