She lowered her eyes. “Well, I suppose it’s some kind of an indiscretion that Edgar — well, something he got himself mixed up with... Oh, you know how those rackets go, some kind of a badger game or photographs or— Why do ask me these questions, Mr. Mason?”
“Because,” Mason said, “I think we may be following a wrong trail, barking up a wrong tree. Tell me as much as you can about Edgar, only condense it.”
“Well,” she said, motioning for him to sit down, and seating herself on the edge of the bed, “Edgar is naïve. He’s — I won’t say he’s weak, but he is easily influenced, and I suppose I haven’t been of too much help to him trying to make things a little easier for him. I guess life wasn’t meant to be that way, Mr. Mason. I guess a man has to develop himself by having things made a little difficult at times instead of having someone whom he looks up to who can smooth things out and take some of the load off his shoulders.”
“That’s what I was coming to,” Mason said. “Do you think there’s anything in Edgar’s past that would have caused him to come to you with a sum of money and ask you to bail him out?”
“I just don’t know, Mr. Mason.”
“He could have been coming to you?”
“He could have been, but everything indicates he was going to come here to Los Angeles and try to deal with this thirty-six-twenty-four-thirty-six situation.”
“And you have no clue as to what that situation is?”
“No.”
“Your brother gambled from time to time?” Mason asked.
She chose her words carefully. “Edgar was impulsive.”
“He gambled from time to time?”
“Don’t all men?”
“He gambled from time to time?”
“Yes,” she flared. “You don’t need to cross-examine me like that. He gambled from time to time.”
“Where?”
“Where do men usually gamble? Sometimes he put two dollars on a horse. Sometimes he put ten dollars on a horse.”
“Las Vegas — Reno?”
“He would go to Las Vegas once in a while.”
“How much did he ever win?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he won much.”
“What was the most he ever lost?”
“Eight hundred dollars.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
“Why did he tell you?”
“Because I’m his sister.”
“Why did he tell you?”
“I told you,” she blazed back at him. I’m his sister. What are you doing, trying to break down my story?”
“Why did he tell you?” Mason asked.
“All right,” she said, lowering her voice, “I had to bail him out. He only had two hundred and I had to make good to the extent of six hundred dollars. He had given a check in Las Vegas and — well, you know how they are.”
“How are they?” Mason asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, but the story is that if you gamble on credit with professional gamblers you have to make good or else.”
“And Edgar was frightened?”
“Terribly frightened.”
“In other words,” Mason said, “I’m trying to establish a pattern. When Edgar gets into real trouble, he comes to you. You’ve been something of a sister and a mother to him.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I guess that’s right.”
“So, if Edgar was in some trouble where he had to raise five thousand dollars, the assumption is he would have told you.”
“Unless he — well, it might have been something that he wouldn’t have wanted to talk to me about. You know, men can get into scrapes of that sort where they wouldn’t want their family to know just what had happened.”
“Who told you that?” Mason asked.
“Why, I... I’ve read it.”
“Ever talk with Edgar about anything like that?”
“No.”
“Know anything about Edgar’s sex life?”
“Virtually nothing.”
Mason regarded her thoughtfully. He said, “There’s a United Airlines plane leaving here for San Francisco at six twenty-seven. I want you to be on that plane.
“I’m going to escort you to the elevator. When you get into the lobby, walk across the lobby casually. Don’t look around as though you might be afraid someone was trying to follow you. We’ll walk two blocks down the street. There’s a taxi stand down there. I’ll put you in a cab. Go to the Union Station. When you get to the Union Station, try to make sure that you’re not being followed. Then go out, get a cab, and go to the airport. When you get to the airport, wait.”
“For what?”
“I’ll try to meet you just before you get on the plane. I’ll have your baggage. I’ll check out of the hotel within an hour or so. That’ll give me time to get to my apartment and pack a bag. I’ll take my bags and your suitcase and join you at the airport.”
“But what about this bag that has the — you know, the money in it?”
“The banks are closed now,” Mason said. “You’ve got to take a chance with that because I want you to be sure and have a cashier’s check made to you as trustee when you walk into the office in the morning.
“The minute the banks open in San Francisco, get that cashier’s check. Then go to the office just as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened. I’ll meet you there when you come in. That should be about ten-thirty. Let’s have that as the deadline. Don’t arrive before ten-thirty. Don’t be any later than that if you can avoid it.”
The telephone rang.
Mason said, “I think that’s for me.”
He picked up the instrument, said a cautious, “Hello.”
Drake’s voice, cheerfully routine, came over the line, “Hi, Perry. Got most of the information you want. It was like rolling off a log.”
“What is it?”
“The Cadillac you wanted is registered under the name of Moray Cassel, nine-o-six Tallmeyer Apartments. I’ve got that much. I haven’t been able to find out much about Cassel’s habits as yet, but he’s been a resident there for something over a year.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Mason said in an undertone.
“Something wrong?”
“The guy gave me his right name,” Mason said. “You could certainly have fooled me. I had him sized up as a blackmailing pimp, a damned good, prosperous, shrewd pimp.”
“And he isn’t?” Drake asked.
“That I’ll have to find out,” Mason said.
“You want him tailed?”
“No. The guy is either too dumb to be true or too smart to be trapped, and I want to find out which it is before I get my feet wet.”
“Okay, let me know if there’s anything else you want.”
“Will do,” Mason said, and hung up.
Diana, watching Mason with anxious eyes, said, “Is something wrong?”
Mason, frowning thoughtfully, let the question go unanswered for a few seconds, then said, “I don’t know. I seem to have made a mistake in sizing up a situation.”
“In what way?”
Mason said, “Thanks to good detective work on the part of the Drake Detective Agency, we have run the blackmailer to ground. His name is Moray Cassel. He drives a Cadillac automobile. He lives in the Tallmeyer Apartments, apartment nine-o-six. But when he came to call on us he gave us his real name. He had his Cadillac parked right in front of the door, having given the doorman a good tip to see that it was left where it would be readily accessible in the parking space reserved for incoming guests with baggage.”
“Well, what’s wrong about that?” Diana asked. “A lot of people who are on brief errands give the doorman a good tip to keep an eye on their cars. That’s the way the doormen make a living. They—”
Mason shook his head. “It isn’t that, Diana,” he interrupted. “The man simply wasn’t that kind of a citizen.”
“How do you know?”