"Now then," Drake said, glancing meaningly at Mason, "who murdered Grieb?"
"Nobody."
"How do you figure that?" Drake asked.
"Well, Grieb and Duncan had some IOU's signed by Sylvia Oxman. Grieb was trying to peddle them at a premium, if he could. He had an idea Frank Oxman would pay a bonus to get hold of them.
"Duncan was anxious to get them in the form of cash, because Duncan knew there was going to be a bust-up of the partnership and he figured it would be easier to divide cash than to hold the sack of notes. So Duncan and Grieb had a big fight yesterday afternoon and Duncan made Grieb promise that he'd get those IOU's reduced to cash by seven o'clock that night. Grieb was going to get a premium for them if he could, and, if he couldn't, he was going to let them go for their face value. It seems Mr. Mason had thrown an awful scare into them when he started handling Sylvia's case.
"Now, I was sticking around the offices until about fifteen or twenty minutes before Duncan came in and discovered the murder, and I know Grieb was alive when I left. He sent for me and said the crap table had a slicker working the game, and sent me over there to take a look. Now, no one had come in who could have paid off those IOU's before I went over to the crap table. Three people went in afterward-Sylvia, Frank Oxman, and Mr. Mason. After Duncan found the body, the IOU's were gone, and there was seventy-five hundred bucks in the desk drawer. That was just the amount of those IOU's, so I figured Oxman must have paid them off. Sam held out for a premium and Oxman wouldn't give it to him, so finally Sam took just the face value of the IOU's."
"Then Oxman must have been in there long enough to have talked with Grieb. Is that right?" Drake asked.
"Yes, that's right. I saw him go in. I didn't see him come out. I thought I was keeping my eye peeled all the time, but you know how it is when you're watching a dice slicker, and Oxman must have gone out without my seeing him. It's a cinch someone paid off those IOU's. I don't think the dame did it. She didn't have the dough for one thing."
"Well, then," Mason said, "what you're getting at is that Oxman must have killed him."
"No," Manning said, vigorously shaking his head, "it all builds up to the fact that Oxman didn't kill him."
Drake said, "Wait a minute, Perry, and let me handle this. I know the whole story… Now, Arthur, why do you think Oxman didn't kill him?"
"Because if Oxman had paid off those IOU's and then killed him, he certainly wouldn't have left the seventy-five hundred dollars in the desk drawer, and if he'd killed him before he'd paid the IOU's, he'd never have left the money there."
Mason's face showed disappointment. He said, "I'm sorry, Paul, but this isn't getting us anywhere. This guy's deductions are just deductions. Anyone can guess what happened from…"
"Wait a minute," Drake interrupted significantly.
Mason caught the look in the detective's eye and became silent.
"Now then," Drake said, "having figured that Oxman didn't kill him, who did?
"Well, like I said," Manning remarked, "I don't think anyone killed him."
"How did he die, then?"
"He committed suicide."
"What makes you think he committed suicide?"
"I think Duncan had the goods on him. I think Sam had been dipping into the partnership funds. Duncan suspected it. Grieb put most of his money in the business and then had some losses in the stock market. Grieb handled all the money. I think he knew Duncan was calling for a showdown and knew that, as soon as a receiver stepped in, Duncan could send him to jail, and he knew Duncan wouldn't want anything better than that.
"The only chance Grieb had to make a killing was to get Oxman to pay a fancy sum for those IOU's. I think at first Grieb thought he could get maybe ten thousand bucks premium and make Oxman promise never to say anything about it. Then Grieb could have told Duncan that Oxman wouldn't pay any premium for the notes and he'd had to let them go for their face value. That would have suited Duncan all right for he'd never have checked up on it, and Grieb could have used the extra cash to square off his shortage."
Mason said impatiently, "Damn it, Paul, this isn't getting us anywhere. I can think up a dozen different theories that…"
He once more stopped in mid-sentence as he caught the look in Drake's eyes.
"Now, what makes you think Grieb could have committed suicide?" Drake asked. "The police experts all say it was murder."
"I know they do, but the reason they say that is because they can't find the gun. Now, Grieb was killed with a.38 caliber automatic that he ordinarily kept in the upper left-hand drawer of his desk."
"How do you know?" the detective asked.
"Why, we went over all that in your office," Manning said.
"Never mind what we went over in my office," Drake told him. "You just begin from scratch and tell Mr. Mason the whole story. I want him to hear it the way you tell it and not the way I'd try to tell it."
"Well," Manning said, "it's this way. First, you've got to consider the type of man you're dealing with. Charlie Duncan is a smart hombre. He keeps his face buttoned up until he's ready to say something, and when he says something it's a mouthful. But most of the time he's just sitting on the side lines sizing things up; but he doesn't give you that impression, because of those gold teeth of his. He keeps his mouth open in a grin and the gold teeth sort of draw attention to the fact that he's grinning. People don't look at his eyes, they look at his teeth. Now, I know this, because I know Charlie Duncan. I've known Charlie Duncan for ten years, and I know the way he works. He thinks fast and he doesn't say much. Most people figured Sam Grieb was the big-shot of the business, because Sam was always acting like the big executive. Sam liked to sit behind his desk and impress people, while Duncan liked to get out on the firing line and slip things over. Left to himself, Grieb could never have kept that business going because he didn't have brains enough to handle the political end."
"All right," Drake said, glancing again at Mason, "that gives us a pretty good sketch of Duncan's character. What's that got to do with the suicide?"
"Well, when they started business," Manning said, "they took out one of these policies of business insurance by which each man insured his life in favor of the other for twenty thousand dollars. If one of them died, the twenty thousand dollars was to go to the other partner, who would use that twenty thousand to pay the heirs of the dead partner for the dead man's share in the business. That's usual in lots of partnerships, I understand. Anyway, that's what the insurance salesman told them. I was there when he talked with Sam. You see, when a partner dies, the surviving partner has to wind up the business and then he has to turn over half of the net assets to an administrator or something. That means that the business is wrecked, because the living partner isn't supposed to buy it in; but when the partners all agree on having an insurance provision of this kind, it's legal, and the other partner simply takes the twenty thousand, pays it over to the heirs in the form of cash, and that represents the value of the dead partner's share in the business. Anyway, that's the way the insurance man put it up to them, and…"
"Mason's a lawyer. He knows all about business and partnership insurance," Drake interrupted. "Go ahead and tell us the rest of it."