“He’s absolutely in the clear. Police have already checked on him up one side and down the other. He had lunch that day with the local manager at the Interstate outfit. He went back to the office with this manager and was there until around two-thirty, blocking out a strategy by which he hoped to trap his wife. Incidentally, Perry, I think the guy had begun to smell a rat. I think Helen Reedley was having her double put on too good an act. That chaperone business was too good to be true.”
Mason said, “Well, there must have been some connection between Hines and Reedley.”
“That’s what the police figure. They’re giving Reedley a shakedown. As soon as they get done, I’ll find out just what they’ve discovered.”
“But why should Orville Reedley pay money to Hines? There’s only one answer to that, Pauclass="underline" it must have been because Hines was giving Helen Reedley a double-cross. But there’s no evidence of that. There’s — Wait a minute, Paul, I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember? Reedley’s a gambler. He’s been doing a little gambling, and it was at a poker game that he broached the subject of the detective agency. Well, Hines also is a gambler. Hang it, Paul, Hines must have been sitting in on that poker game when Reedley asked that question. And yet Reedley isn’t supposed to know Hines... That money must have changed hands in a poker game and found its way into Hines’s pocket.”
“How?” Drake asked.
“Wait a minute,” Mason said. “I’m beginning to get the picture now. That gambler friend of Helen Reedley’s... ”
“What about him?”
“Probably in love with her. Remember that Helen got Hines to rig up the double for her, but she didn’t tell him why. The gambler tipped Helen off to the probability that her husband’s detectives were going to be on the job, but he also wanted to know why. So he probably hired Hines to do a little snooping for him, and the money with which he paid Hines was, ironically enough, money that had been lost to him in a poker game — lost by Orville Reedley!”
Drake nodded. “That does it, all right, Perry. When you stop to think, it’s logical enough.”
“That’s probably the way it was. When did Reedley get those bills at his bank?”
“About a week ago. Went in and cashed a check for five thousand dollars — wanted it all in hundreds. The bank has a pretty good idea what he does with it. Of course, the explanation of the listing of the numbers is that the Government is trying to get information about the black market, and about the boys who are evading the income tax. Reedley has a clear record. But the bank took the numbers of those bills simply because the drawer with the hundred-dollar bills in it had already been arranged and the list was right there. So that’s it, Perry.”
Mason nodded in assent, but Drake had not quite finished.
“Now,” Paul went on, “let’s give the police a run-around on this. Orville Reedley can’t tell them how Hines got those bills, because in the first place he doesn’t know, and in the second he’d be afraid to even if he did know.”
“Why afraid?”
“He lost them gambling,” Paul explained. “Suppose he tells the officers that. Then the officers say, ‘O.K., who were you gambling with? Give us the names.’ ”
“Boys who start tattling on these big gamblers,” Mason said, “aren’t very good life-insurance risks.”
Drake nodded.
“So,” Mason went on, “you’re quite right. We’ll give Orville L. Reedley to the police as a nice red herring. You say his present flame is Daphne Gridley?”
“As nearly as we can tell.”
“See that the cops get a tip on that, too.”
“You’ve already sent his wife off on a hot scent.”
Mason grinned. “Start the cops on it as well. The success of a red herring, Paul, depends on choosing one who just might be suspect—”
“Okay, Perry, we’ll toss Reedley to the wolves.”
“What else have you got?”
“I don’t suppose it makes any difference, but I’ve identified that boy friend of Helen Reedley’s that she was so touchy about.”
“Who is he?”
“Chap by the name of Arthur Clovis.”
“How in the world did you get a line on him, Paul?”
“Through those telephone numbers on the pad that Frank Holt picked up.”
“Say, wait a minute, Paul. You say the number was on that pad?”
“That’s right.”
“And that pad was in Carlotta Tipton’s apartment?”
“Uh-huh.”
“By the telephone that Hines used?”
“Yes.”
“But Hines wasn’t supposed to know anything about the boy friend. That was supposed to be a secret from him!”
“That’s the way I understood it, too — but the number was there.”
“How did you know it was Helen’s friend’s number?”
“We had a lucky break there. I had my men checking up on all the telephone numbers on that pad. One of them happened to be working today on this Arthur Clovis — at Clovis’s apartment — when suddenly Helen Reedley came to call on Clovis. The operative who was there had no idea who she was, naturally, but he gave me a description of her a little while ago that checked all right.”
“Better watch those descriptions, Paul,” Mason said. “Don’t forget how easy it was to find brunettes of that same physical description.”
“I know, but the Reedley girl has something else that sticks out like a sore thumb. The operative made a note in parentheses after the description — he called her ‘high-voltage.’ That’s certainly Helen Reedley.”
Mason nodded. “Sounds that way. Now how about Arthur Clovis? What does he do?”
Drake grinned as he fished a cigarette case out of his pocket. “You’ll get a real kick out of this, Perry.”
“Okay, let me have it. What does he do?”
“He works in a bank.”
“What bank?”
Drake lit the cigarette and blew out the match deliberately. “The bank where Orville L. Reedley keeps his account.”
“Well, I’ll be damned! What job?”
“Assistant cashier. Evidently a nice chap — dreamy-eyed and idealistic. From all we can find out, he’s been saving some money and planning to go into business for himself.”
“Then he’s quite well acquainted with Orville Reedley?”
“I should suppose so.”
“Probably handles his deposits, cashes his checks, and all that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Say, wait a minute, Paul. Do you suppose he’s the one that cashed Reedley’s check and recorded the numbers on those hundred-dollar bills?”
“Gosh, Perry, he may have been.”
Mason frowned. “Let’s give this some thought, Paul. If Hines had Arthur Clovis’s phone number, it must mean he’s been doing some gumshoeing of his own. Ostensibly, he was just a nice, cooperative little tool for Helen Reedley. Really, he was laying the foundation for a sell-out. He must have got that telephone number by snooping around Helen Reedley’s apartment. And that gives us a picture. Helen Reedley gave him her keys and the run of the apartment, so that he could fix up this substitute brunette convincingly. He used the keys to prowl around whenever the apartment was unoccupied.
“That means only one thing, Paul — blackmail. Or a sell-out, if you look at it from the other angle. Now that gambler, let’s suppose he’s in love with Helen Reedley. Any idea who he might be?”
“Hines went around some with Carl Orcutt,” Drake replied. “Orcutt used him for little things.”