“I don’t know whether there’s anything to it or not. Personally I’m a poor gambler. Anyhow I’m just telling you about Dawn Joyce. She’s easy on the eyes, and she showed as much scenery as the law allowed.
“Now she knew this fellow Casselman. There’s no doubt about that. She went out with him on several occasions as a private date. She seemed to like him, or else they had some kind of a business deal hooked up. No one knows.
“Casselman was a blackmailer, but I can’t prove that on him. No one knows just how he lived. He was a sharpshooter. He hung around the Strip in Las Vegas, and he managed to make a pretty good living doing nothing. He made it in cash. He didn’t use bank accounts, and he didn’t make income tax returns. He just drifted along on a hand-to-mouth basis.
“Lots of people come to Las Vegas. Some of them are tourists who are just passing through. Some of them are a cafe society set from Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“A man who had a good memory for faces and figures could make money by remembering things other people would like to forget. That would particularly be true if he had a few show girls giving him tips about who did what and when and where.”
“Yes,” Mason said, “I can see. And that might be hard to trace.”
“It is hard to trace,” Drake agreed. “Casselman had about fifteen hundred dollars in his wallet when he was shot. As far as anybody-can tell, that’s every cent he had in the world and yet you know damn well it wasn’t. He’s got money stashed away somewhere, either in a safety deposit box under another name or buried or hidden somewhere. In any event, he could have gone and put his hand on cash when he needed it. There were times when he paid out as much as ten or fifteen thousand dollars for options on property for a quick deal, and he’s produced the cash every time, a nice assortment of hundred-dollar bills.”
“And the income tax people have never looked him up?” Mason asked.
“Never made a pass at him as far as I can find out. The guy was a smooth operator. He kept in the background, and he had never made the mistake of making that first income tax return. As far as the records were concerned, no one knew he was alive.
“There’s plenty of tie-in between Dawn Joyce who is now Homer Garvin, Jr.’s wife, and George Casselman who is now a corpse. For some reason, Mrs. Garvin, Jr. would like very, very much indeed to have the entire matter hushed up. Whatever her connections with Casselman and her Nevada activities were, she doesn’t care about having them aired in the daily press, particularly in view of the fact that she’d like to be received into the upper crust as the wife of Junior Garvin.”
“How does he rate?” Mason asked.
“That depends on the class of person you ask. He’s a plunger and wild. But he may steady down, and his old man is well thought of, although the old man never goes in for any of the social stuff.
“The kid went into this used car dealing and, believe me, he works it fast. He believes in quantity turnover and he’ll take small profits if he can’t make big profits. But he wants turnover and he gets turnover. He has evidently made quite a bit of money out of the car business, and he’s plunging in real estate, taking options on various bits of property, and there again he makes quick turnovers. He managed to find out where some property was going to be condemned by the State. No one knows exactly how he found it out, but he showed up with a string of options, and naturally the State was anxious to do business with one man who had control of a big percentage of the property, and who was willing to make a fast buck and let it go at that.”
“What did you find out about the Acme Electric and Plumbing Repair Company?”
“Both the Acme outfit and the Eureka Associated Renovators received mail at 1397 Chatham Street, a rooming house. Some man rented a room there and received all the mail. He seldom slept there, but kept his rent paid and dropped in from time to time.”
“Description?” Mason asked.
“General,” Drake said. “Fits almost anyone. Because he kept the rent paid in advance, no one paid much attention to him.
“I can give you one tip on this murder trial, Perry. Hamilton Burger is going to leave Dawn Joyce out of it just as much as he can. His idea is that you made a switch in murder weapons, and he thinks he can prove it. He thinks he’s got the deadwood on Stephanie Falkner.
“Of course, you can try to bring in the idea that Dawn Joyce could have been the killer by introducing evidence about that gun, but the minute you do that, Burger is going to go all out with the contention that you went down there with the murder gun, that you pulled a fake accident in order to divert attention, and switched guns simply to drag in Dawn Joyce as a red herring.”
“Well,” Mason said, “I guess we’ll give him all the chance he wants to make that claim. He can’t prove I switched guns.”
“Apparently he can’t prove it,” Drake said, “and that’s burning him up. He can surmise and that’s about all... You’re representing Stephanie Falkner?”
“I’m going to represent her.”
“Look, Perry, just off the record, what does she say? What happened?”
“There,” Mason said, “is the thing that bothers me. She won’t say a word, except to assure me that she didn’t shoot Casselman. She says she’s innocent of any crime. She won’t amplify that statement. She says that there is something she would have to disclose if I started cross-examining her that no one knows and she doesn’t intend ever to let it come out.”
“Something in her past?” Drake asked.
“I assume so,” Mason said. “She’ll break down her reserve and tell me her story eventually but right at the moment she’s sitting tight.
“She says they are going to have to prove her guilty before they can convict her and she says they simply can’t do anything more than direct suspicion toward her way with some very inconsequential circumstantial evidence... And she may be right at that.”
“Well,” Drake said, “I wish you luck.”
“There’s just a chance I could need it,” Mason told him grinning.
“What about the place where those billheads were printed? Can you get any line on that?”
“Not so far. We’re telephoning like mad, and we’re covering all the more likely job-printing establishments with personal investigators. So far no luck.”
“Keep after it,” Mason said.
Drake lurched up out of the chair. “We’ll sure do that, Perry, and we’ll let you know anything that turns up.”
Chapter Seventeen
Hamilton Burger arose to make his opening address to the jury.
“In this case,” he said, “I am going to be brief and factual. It is the intention of the prosecution to avoid all dramatics and to present the case with such mathematical certainty that there can be but one inescapable conclusion.
“On the seventh day of October of this year, George Casselman met his death. Medical evidence will show you ladies and gentlemen of the jury that a revolver was placed against Casselman’s body just below the heart and slightly to the left of the median line. The trigger was pulled. The shot was what is known as a con-tact wound. That is, the muzzle of the revolver was firmly held directly against the body of the victim. In this way, the gases from the exploding shell as well as the bullet went into the victim’s body. Under those circumstances, the sound of the report would have been greatly muffled.