“What I was doing Monday night doesn’t have anything to do with the case. You know it doesn’t. The newspaper says you, yourself, talked with Tidings Tuesday morning around eleven o’clock… And I see you’re representing that Gailord girl… I wish you luck with her.”
“Are you,” Mason asked, “trying to change the subject?”
“No, of course not.”
“What do you know about Miss Gailord?”
“Nothing.”
“You know her?”
“I’ve met her, yes.”
“Where?”
“Oh, several times — at social functions.”
“She moves in your circle?”
“Not exactly. She tries to… wait a minute, I don’t mean it that way.”
“Yes, you do,” Mason said. “That’s exactly what you meant. The remark may have slipped out, but you meant it.”
“All right, then, I did. It’s just what she’s doing.”
“She’s a social climber?”
“If you want to put it that way. Good Lord, what if her father was a grand duke? Who cares?”
Mason, watching her narrowly, said, “At a guess, she has specific ambitions toward marriage?”
“I guess all women do, don’t they?”
“I wouldn’t know. What’s the catch she’s after?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mason. I don’t care to discuss it.”
“Simply because she’s a rival?”
“What do you mean? What are you insinuating?”
Mason said, “I may know more than you give me credit for.”
She said hotly, “You look here, Mr. Mason. Coleman Reeger and I are good friends, and that’s all. I don’t care whom he marries — only I’d hate to see him walk into a trap.”
“You think that’s what he’s doing?”
She said firmly, “That’s enough, Mr. Mason. We aren’t going to discuss that matter, and we’ll leave Coleman Reeger out of it.”
“All right, we will if you’ll tell me where you were Monday night.”
She laughed and said, “You’re laying another trap for me, aren’t you, Mr. Mason?”
The waiter brought their drinks.
Mason said, “Look here. You weren’t just playing a hunch on that trust fund business. You’ve been sticking up for Peltham. You’re in communication with him. You have the most implicit faith in him. That means that — well, you know what it means.”
“What does it mean?” she asked.
Mason said, “You may mask your face, but you can’t mask your feelings.”
She twisted the stem of her glass, rotating it by a slow motion of the thumb and forefinger while she kept her eyes from his. “I don’t think I’m going to make any answer to that,” she said.
“You mean you don’t understand me?”
“N-n-no. Not exactly that, but I’d want you to be very definite before I — before I said anything at all.”
Mason tossed off his drink, pulled a bill from his pocket, and dropped it on the table. “Now listen,” he said, “we’ve played ring-around-the-rosy and button-button-who’s-got-the-button until I’m sick of it. You can either talk to me now and talk to me frankly and fairly, or I’ll walk out, and you can chase me around.”
“But why should I want to chase you around, Mr. Mason? It’s the other way around. You were following me.”
“Forget it,” Mason said. “I’m tired of playing horse. Do you want me to walk out, or don’t you?”
Her eyes showed a quick flash of some baffling expression. “Mr. Mason,” she said, with feeling, “if you’d get up from this table, walk out of that door, and not ask me any more questions, I’d think — I’d think it was one of the biggest breaks I’d ever had in my whole life.”
Without a word, Mason pushed back his chair, picked up his hat, and started for the door. He turned midway to glance back at her surprised features and said, “You know where my office is,” — then walked out and left her.
Chapter 7
Della Street looked up as Mason unlocked the door of his private office and came striding into the room.
“Oh — oh,” she said. “Was it as bad as all that?”
“Worse,” Mason told her, taking off his hat and throwing it on a chair. “I’m getting fed up with things. I’ve bought a pig in a poke, and it’s the last time.”
“But Paul Drake telephoned that you’d picked her up, and that everything seemed all right.”
“Drake,” Mason said, “is a damn poor judge of feminine character. I don’t know but what I’m not as bad… When did Drake telephone?”
“A few minutes ago. He said he guessed there was no need for him to keep a shadow on the woman, but he’d done it just on general principles, that she was Adelle Hastings, that you’d left her in a cocktail lounge, that she’d gone out right after you had left — within a matter of minutes — and had gone straight to her apartment. If you’ll give me the other half of that ten thousand dollars, Chief, I’ll take it down to the bank and make a deposit.”
Mason laughed mirthlessly.
“What’s the matter? Haven’t you got it?”
“No.”
“Didn’t she have it?”
“She must have it,” Mason said, “and she’s taking me for a ride to the tune of ten grand.”
“How do you figure?”
Mason spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. “A sucker,” he said. “Just a plain pushover. I was so damn conscientious that I stuck my finger in the porridge and started stirring. Now I’ve stirred out all the lumps, and haven’t anything to show for it except a burned finger.”
“You mean she isn’t going to give you the other half of that bill?”
“Why should she? Peltham is satisfied, and she’s satisfied. Things are moving fine. She has an iron-clad alibi for Tuesday morning. At least, she says she has, and I give her credit for being smart enough to be telling the truth. If she fixed up an alibi, she fixed up a good one.
“I’ve prodded Holcomb into the position of bringing pressure to bear all along the line, to fix the time of that murder as immediately after noon on Tuesday. I have the smaller piece of that ten-thousand-dollar bill. I can’t do anything with it until I get the other half… If I’m a big enough sap to work for nothing, why should anyone pay me for it?”
She said thoughtfully, “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”
He nodded moodily. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Drake says his men shadowed Abigail Tump, that she led them to the man he thinks is the secretary for the orphan asylum you want. He also picked up a copy of the ad which was left in the Contractor’s Journal by Miss Hastings.”
“What does the ad say?” Mason asked, dropping into his big swivel chair, elevating his feet to the desk, and taking a cigarette from the office humidor.
Della Street consulted her shorthand notebook and read, “ ‘Have nothing to add to situation. Granting interview this time would be unwise. You’re doing fine. P.’ ”
Mason said, “That’s rubbing it in… I’m doing fine, am I? Yes, Della. Take this down. Type it out and rush it over to the Contractor’s Journal. Have them carry it in their earliest possible issue: ‘P. I don’t like to contract for work without blueprints. Arrange to deliver detailed plans and specifications or anticipate serious defects in finished structure.’ Now read that back to me, Della.”
She read it back to him.
Mason nodded grimly. “Okay,” he said.
She looked at him with eyes that showed a trace of concern. “Wouldn’t it be better, Chief, to sit tight now and let things develop?”
“I’m not built that way,” he said. “It would probably be the prudent thing to do. In any event, it would be the conventional thing to do, but you never get far being prudent and conventional. Right now, this case is wide open. If I sit back and wait, it’ll crystallize against the client I’ll eventually have to represent.”