Drake said, “I’ll get on the job. Want me to do any investigating on that car business?”
“Just tag along behind the police,” Mason said. “Don’t bother to do anything on your own hook as yet. Just gather facts and keep me posted.”
“Call you later on?” Drake asked.
“No,” Mason said. “I’m going to sleep. They dragged me up in the wee small hours this morning.”
“I heard about that,” Drake said. “By the way, Perry, that man the boys were covering for you was also on the board of trustees of the hospital with Tidings… I presume you knew that.”
“Uh huh.”
“Mean anything?” Drake asked.
“I think so,” Mason said, “but I don’t know what — not yet.”
“Want me to do any work on that angle?”
“I don’t think so, Paul. I don’t know just where I stand yet. Pick up what information you can without going to too much expense. Don’t bother with it personally. Just put a good leg man on it, and we’ll check over the dope in the morning.”
“Okay,” Drake said.
“Here’s something I am interested in, Paul,” Mason went on.
“Shoot.”
“This has to be handled with kid gloves. I want the dope on it, and I want it just as fast as you can get it.”
“What is it?”
“Robert Peltham,” Mason said. “He must never know that I’m making the investigation, but I want to find out whom he’s sweet on. I tried to telephone him this afternoon. He wasn’t in, and his secretary said she didn’t know when he’d be in. She was delightfully vague.”
“Isn’t he married?” Drake asked.
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “If he is, my best hunch is that his wife isn’t the center of attraction.”
“If he’s married, he’ll keep his love affairs pretty well covered up,” Drake warned. “I may not be able to get you anything on it for a day or two.”
“I’d like very much to have it before two o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” Mason said. “See what you can do, Paul.”
“Okay, I will.”
Mason hung up the telephone, stretched out on the bed, picked up a book, and tried to resume his reading. He couldn’t get interested in the book, nor on the other hand did he feel like sleeping. He tossed the book to the floor, sat up in a chair by the window, smoked three cigarettes, then turned off the lights, raised the windows, and got into bed. It was an hour before he dropped off to sleep.
By ten o’clock in the morning when he reached the office, events were gathering mass and momentum like a huge snowball rolling down a steep slope.
The preliminary investigations of the auditors had uncovered what amounted to a serious shortage in the trust funds of the Elmer Hastings Memorial Hospital. They were baffled, however, by the fact that all check stubs, all cancelled checks, and the check ledgers had disappeared. From the remaining books and available data, however, it was evident that some two hundred thousand dollars had been checked out of trust funds, and apparently this sum was not reflected in current assets or legitimate operating expenses. In view of the fact that the trustees had the discretionary right to sell stocks and bonds or other holdings and re-invest the proceeds, the auditors pointed out that it would be necessary to follow the trail of tangible assets through a complicated series of transactions in order to get an accurate picture.
Because withdrawals from the trust fund could be made only by checks signed by Albert Tidings and one other trustee, it appeared that there were what the newspaper cautiously referred to as “grave and far-reaching implications.” The newspaper account mentioned that Robert Peltham was reported to be out of town on business. His office would give no information as to where the architect could be reached. Albert Tidings had mysteriously disappeared. Police, frantically working on clues in connection with the finding of Tidings’ automobile with the telltale stains on the front seat and the bullet-pierced topcoat, were making a determined effort to learn more of where Tidings had gone after leaving his office. They had run up against a blank wall.
Parker C. Stell, the other member of the board of trustees, had consulted the firm of certified public accountants as soon as he knew that the investigation was under way. He had placed his own bookkeeping facilities at the disposal of the accountants. He announced he was deeply shocked and anxious to render every assistance possible. He said that he had been called on from time to time at the request of Tidings to sign some checks, that he thought Peltham had been the one who signed most of the checks with Tidings. He admitted that within what he termed “reasonable limitations” matters were left very much in Tidings’ hands, and signing many of the smaller checks was considered a matter of routine formality once Tidings’ name appeared on them. Larger checks, however, he said, were scrutinized carefully — at least those which he had signed with Tidings. These had represented monies paid out for securities in which the funds of the trust had been re-invested. The books of the trust fund had, he believed, been kept exclusively by Tidings who submitted detailed reports from time to time as to the state of the trust fund.
Adelle Hastings had not minced words in her characterization of the members of the board who administered the trust funds. Albert Tidings she accused of criminal mismanagement, Parker Stell of credulous inefficiency, and as for Robert Peltham, she insisted that he was honest, upright, and conscientious, and that Albert Tidings would never have dared submit any checks to him for signature which were not actual bona fide trust fund withdrawals.
Mason looked up from reading the newspaper to say to Della Street, “Well, I guess this is what he had reference to… Strange, however, that it broke twenty-four hours later than he had anticipated.”
She nodded, then after a moment said, “Chief, do you notice something peculiar about that?”
“What?”
“The way Adelle Hastings sticks up for Robert Peltham. After all, you know, Tidings has disappeared. That bloodstained coat could well be a blind to throw police off the track. Peltham has skipped out. Parker Stell is available and doing everything he can. Yet she accuses him of credulity and inefficiency.”
“Keep it up,” Mason encouraged. “You’re doing fine, Della. If you can think this thing out, I won’t have to work up a headache wrestling with a lot of confusing facts.”
She said, “Miss Hastings apparently had some pretty definite information as to what was going on, something on which she could base definite accusations.”
Mason nodded.
“She went to the bat and blew the lid off,” Della Street said. “Now according to all outward indications, Peltham is just as deep in the mud as Tidings is in the mire, but Adelle Hastings sticks up for him. Parker Stell, judging from newspaper accounts, is the only one who is doing the logical, reasonable, manly thing. Yet Miss Hastings doesn’t hesitate to accuse him of inefficiency.”
“You mean,” Mason asked, “that you think Adelle Hastings got her inside information as to what was going on from Robert Peltham?”
She said, “Goosy, wake up. I mean that Adelle Hastings holds the other half of the ten-thousand-dollar bill which we have in the safe.”
Mason sat bolt upright in his chair. “Now,” he said, “you have got something.”
“Well,” she went on, “it’s just guesswork, but I can’t figure Miss Hastings on any other basis. As one woman judging another woman, I’d say she was in love with Peltham… At any rate, she has a faith in him which doesn’t seem entirely justified by the circumstances, and she’s taking pains to make that faith public.
“The rest of it all fits in. You can see what would happen if it should appear that Peltham, as one of the trustees, had been carrying on a surreptitious intimacy with Adelle Hastings.”