“Then what’ll happen when they catch Chennery?” she asked.
“They won’t catch him,” Mason said, with a grin. “Chennery reads the newspapers, and he knows, the ropes. You see, Della, it’s one of those cases where a lawyer has to remember that the ultimate goal of every good attorney is to see that justice is done. There are times when methods must be subordinated to results.”
“You mean when you have to fight the devil with fire?”
“Not exactly. Of course Sergeant Holcomb was distorting the facts — not to deliberately distort them, but under the mistaken impression that he was keeping them straight. I had to take that into consideration.”
They walked in silence for a bit, then Mason asked, “How about Virgie? Is she going to snap out of it?”
“I think so: she put in a long distance call for her boyfriend.”
“One of those disinterested, academic conversations,” he asked, “about the ballistics of pistol bullets, and...”
She interrupted him with a laugh, and said, “You’d be surprised about Virginia.”
“You mean she was mushy over the telephone?” Mason asked incredulously.
“Well, she was pretty sugar-coated, and just before she hung up, she...”