Mason said, “I’ll let Holcomb do that.”
“That will be an awful shock to her, Chief… Shouldn’t you have tipped her off that you had reason to believe it was a plant, and not to get all excited about it?”
“No,” Mason said.
“Why, Chief?”
Mason said, “I originally intended that little plant to trap Adelle Hastings. I wanted to smoke Peltham out into the open, and I figured that someone would do some talking if it appeared that Peltham was dead.”
“That’s just the danger,” Della Street pointed out. “If Mrs. Tidings thinks Peltham is dead, she might say something.”
“Let her say it,” Mason said. “If Peltham’s hiding behind her skirts, it’s time he was pushed out into the open.”
“Do you think he is?”
Mason said, “I don’t know. Get this, Della. Lots of lawyers go into court with a case founded on false testimony. Sometimes they make it stick. Sometimes they don’t. Personally, I’ve never dared to take the risk. Truth is the most powerful weapon a man can use, and if you practice law the way we do, it’s the only weapon powerful enough to use.
“A lawyer doing the things that I have done and relying on anything less powerful than truth would be disbarred in a month. This case bothers me… It baffles me. I can’t figure exactly what happened, yet I have to know what happened.