"You're one swell guy, Mr. Mason," Belgrade said. "Do you forgive me, Mr. Drake?"
Mason said, "Don't press that question now, George. I'll have a chat with him and then we'll let you know the answer."
"Thanks a lot, Mr. Mason. I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate the way you're taking this."
As the two men walked from the house, they could hear Florence Belgrade's voice rising in machine-gun rapidity. A door slammed shut, cutting off the sound. Drake remarked with feeling, "I wish you'd let me cut loose on that rat."
"No," Mason told him, "we can't afford to antagonize him now. He's important. He's going to be about the most important witness who'll appear before the Federal Grand Jury. It might be a lot better to have him feeling friendly toward our side of the case, Paul. He's already received his money from the newspaper. Personally, I don't blame him too much. I know just how he felt. He'd been working on a salary, and suddenly had an opportunity to make a wad of dough by telling something to a newspaper that he thought wouldn't make any particular trouble for anyone."
Drake said, "I wish to hell I knew why you're so damned anxious to stick up for Belgrade."
"Because," Mason told him, "I make my living by dealing with people. Remember, Paul, if Belgrade was a man of outstanding ability, without any soft spots in his make-up, you couldn't hire him to work for you at eight dollars a day. You have to make allowances for people. Belgrade sold us out. That's admitted. He did it, not because he had anything against us, but because he needed the money. Now then, he's already received that money. He's facing the future. His ability to get work in the future depends a lot on placating you. If you let him feel, in advance, you're going to turn him down cold, he'll turn against you and be bitter. If you let him feel that you're holding his case under advisement, he'll do anything in the world to accommodate you. That means that when he gets in front of the Grand Jury he'll be trying to say what you want him to say-that is, as far as it's in accord with his recollection."
"Well," Drake admitted, "I see your point. But, as far as I'm concerned, he can go to hell. He sold us out."
The men walked to the corner in silence. Mason said, "Well, here are the cars, Paul. I guess I hadn't better stick around this neighborhood."
"Where are you going, Perry?"
"Oh, places," Mason said casually.
Drake stared steadily at him. "You're not going to the Christy Hotel, are you?"
"Why?"
"I have an idea you're figuring on calling on Frank Oxman."
"So what?"
"Don't do it," Drake said earnestly. "That man's dangerous, and you're already in one hell of a hot spot, Perry."
"It won't get any cooler if I stick around in that one spot," Mason told him.
"Well, lay off Frank Oxman. He's dangerous… Oh, by the way, Perry, I think we've found out who's backing him."
Mason, looking up and down the street to make certain there were no radio cars in sight, said, "All right, Paul. Give it to me fast."
"We're keeping a tail on Oxman, just as you instructed," Drake said, "and we find that he telephoned a man by the name of Carter C. Squires, at the Poindexter Hotel. Squires is the head of a gambling ring that dopes race horses, fixes prize fights, and bets on sure things. He spends most of his time in the lobby of the Poindexter and hanging around the bar. Incidentally, he has a police record somewhere, and he's crooked as a corkscrew, but he has money. He finances a lot of crooked schemes and takes a big cut. Oxman talked with Squires on the telephone. He seemed in an awful lather trying to get the call through."
"You couldn't get in on the conversation?" Mason asked.
"No, I couldn't. But Oxman was talking for almost ten minutes."
"That was after he went to the Christy Hotel?"
"Yes."
"Well," Mason said slowly, "I think I'll take a chance on Oxman, at that… I have a little surprise for Oxman… I want to see how he can take it. So far, he's only been dishing it out."
CHAPTER 13
MASON ENTERED the lobby of the Christy Hotel, and paused to take mental inventory. Sylvia Oxman was nowhere in sight. Mason walked to the elevators, went to the fifth floor, walked rapidly down the corridor to Room 519, and tapped on the door. After a moment he heard motion, the sound of a bolt sliding back, and the door opened.
A thin, almost foppishly dressed man in a double breasted gray suit stood on the threshold and surveyed Mason with hostile eyes.
Mason said simply, "I'm coming in, Oxman."
Oxman hesitated a moment, then stepped to one side, and held the door open. After Mason went in, he kicked the door shut and twisted the bolt.
"You left your hotel rather suddenly," Mason remarked affably.
Oxman indicated a chair with a well-manicured hand, on the third finger of which appeared a huge diamond. His hair, neatly waved back from his forehead, reflected glinting highlights from the window. His suit was spotless and freshly pressed, his shoes burnished to a resplendent shine. After Mason had seated himself, Oxman perched on the edge of the bed and propped pillows between his back and the wall. After a moment he said, "I wanted to dodge newspaper reporters."
"Any chance you wanted to dodge the police?" Mason asked.
A slight smile flirted about the corners of Oxman's mouth. "No," he said, "I'm not dodging the police."
Mason, staring steadily at him, said, "I'm Perry Mason, the lawyer."
"Yes, I knew who you were," Oxman said tonelessly. "You left your apartment rather suddenly, didn't you, Mason?"
Mason grinned. "Yes," he said, "I had business to attend to."
"Did you," Oxman inquired, "know the police were looking for you?"
Mason raised his eyebrows. "For me?"
"Yes."
"On what charge?"
"Murder," Oxman said. "Being an accessory after the fact is, I believe, the specific charge."
"Well," Mason told him, "it's fortunate I found you, then."
"Go on," Oxman told him, "spring it."
"I see by the paper," Mason said, "that you bought some IOU's from Grieb."
"What if I did?"
"And paid cash for them."
"Yes?"
"Cash which was found in the left-hand drawer of Grieb's desk."
"I believe so," Oxman agreed.
Mason slowly and impressively took from his pocket the three IOU's which Sylvia Oxman had signed that morning in the hotel. "Take a look at these, Oxman," he said.
Oxman moved forward on the bed. Mason, crossing his legs, held three IOU's pressed tightly against his leg so that Oxman could see the three signatures.
"So what?" Oxman asked.
"If these," Mason suggested, "are the original IOU's, where does that leave you, Oxman?"
Oxman yawned, patted his lips with four polite fingers, and said, "Really, Mason, I'd have expected something far more clever from you."
"Has it ever occurred to you," Mason went on, "that if I hold those original IOU's, the ones you have are forgeries?"
"Oh, I don't think Sam Grieb would have sold me forged IOU's."
"We can prove in court that they're forgeries."
Oxman's tongue made clucking noises against the roof of his mouth. "Grieb shouldn't have sold me forgeries," he said. "That wasn't a nice thing for Grieb to have done. Of course, if they are forgeries, which remains to be proven, I can then recover the seventy-five hundred dollars from Grieb's estate. So you see, Mason, I personally have nothing to lose. Until you prove they're forgeries, I can collect on them as genuine. If you can prove they are forgeries, then, on the strength of the proof you've made, I can recover from Grieb's estate."
"So that's the way you figure it, is it?" Mason asked.