Case of the Footloose Doll by Erle Stanley Gardner

Driscoll. Katherine showed up, registered, left her baggage, and went right out to a cab.
    “I followed in my car. She went direct to Fern Driscoll’s apartment in the Rexmore.
    “So I went up and rang the bell after she’d been there long enough to get the preliminaries over with.”
    “That was the first time you’d been to Miss Driscoll’s apartment?” Mason asked.
    “Actually it was the second time . . . Suppose you let me tell it in my own way.”
    “All right,” Mason said. “Go ahead.”
    “Well, Katherine came to the door, took a good look at me and after I’d introduced myself she used some strong language, then swung on me and cracked me on the nose.”
    “Then what happened?” Mason asked.

    “I got a bloody nose. She slammed and locked the door before I could do a damned thing. I suppose she’s accustomed to playing with people who are too gentlemanly to strike a woman. Believe me, if she hadn’t got that door slammed and locked just when she did, I’d have broken her god-damned jaw.”
    “Your language, Carl!” Nellie admonished.
    “Her god-damned jaw!” Harrod repeated, more emphatically and in a louder voice.
    Nellie made clicking noises with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, indicating shocked disapproval.
    “Go on,” Mason said.
    “All right. I went back after a while,” Harrod said, “and knocked again.
    Believe me, if the door had opened and this Baylor bitch had been there, I’d—”
    “Your language, Carl,” Nellie said. “Mr. Mason’s a lawyer.”
    “I mean, this Baylor girl,” Harrod amended hastily, “if she’d been there, I’d have given her something to remember me by. That is, if she’d opened the door.”
    “She wasn’t there?”
    “I think she was,” Harrod said. “Someone was in there with her. I could hear them talking. I don’t know who it was.”
    “All right. What happened?”
    “I’ve told you what happened. I rang the chimes. Fern Driscoll pushed open the door and lurched at me with this ice pick without so much as a word!”
    “Not a single word?”
    “Well, she said something like ‘You again!’ or something like that.”
    “Were the lights on in the apartment?” Mason asked.
    “What do you mean, were the lights on?” Harrod countered.
    “When the apartment door was opened,” Mason said, “were lights on in the little reception hallway of the apartment?” 
    Harrod thought for a moment. “I don’t remember. Why?”
    “I was wondering why you didn’t see the ice pick so you could avoid it,” Mason explained. “You wouldn’t have just stood there while someone made a pass at you with a weapon like that.”
    Again Harrod thought for a moment, then said “I guess you’re right. I sure as hell didn’t see any ice pick. The lights weren’t on in the apartment. That is, they may have been on in the apartment itself, but the door opens into a little hallway. When you go in the door, there’s a little, narrow hallway, then you make a sharp, right-angle turn to the left and then you come into the main apartment.”
    “And you had no idea you had been stabbed with an ice pick until after the door closed?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And you didn’t see the ice pick?”
    “No.”
    “Then you couldn’t have seen the face of the woman who wielded the ice pick clearly enough to be absolutely certain,” Mason said. “As far as you know, it could have been Katherine Baylor who stabbed you instead of Fern Driscoll.”
    Harrod’s face showed anger. “You’ve got no right to come up here and cross-examine me and—damn it, I’m trying to be co-operative. Now I’ll make you a proposition, Mason.”
    “What is it?”
    “Your client can make a settlement with me. Your secretary there can type up a release and I’ll sign it.”
    “What sort of a settlement?”
    Harrod shook his head. “You go talk with your client, then you make me an offer. You’ve heard my story, now go get hers. Get it all. Don’t take