Della Street threw the door open.
Sybil Harlan stood in the doorway. Her face was a frozen mask.
“All right,” Mason said, “come in and sit down. Now tell me, what is it?”
“George Lutts,” she said as Della Street closed the door.
“What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“How did he die?”
“Someone shot him.”
“Where?”
“In the chest. I—”
“No, no,” Mason said. “Where was he when he was shot?”
“Up in the house on the hill.”
“Who was with him?”
“I was.”
Mason stepped in front of her. His voice was like a slap. “Cut out the dramatic stuff. Get yourself together. Who else was with him?”
“Only one person.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Someone who was hiding in the house. Someone who had a key.”
“Go on,” Mason said, “let’s have it.”
She said, “George Lutts is a smooth operator. He felt that if his two thousand shares of stock were worth thirty-two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars to you, the stock would be going up in value. No one else knew what he had been paid for the stock. Apparently, after the directors’ meeting, Regerson Neffs complained about the fact that Lutts had sold out. Lutts told Neffs he’d buy his stock at whatever price Neffs wanted to put on it.”
“So what?”
“So Neffs, who had three thousand shares of stock, put a price of eight dollars a share on it, and Lutts wrote him a check for twenty-four thousand dollars.”
Mason said, “That left Lutts holding three thousand shares of stock instead of the two thousand he’d had earlier in the day, and left him with eight thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars in clear profit.”
Mrs. Harlan nodded.
“Go on,” Mason said.
She said, “Lutts was waiting for me when I came out of the beauty parlor.”
“What time was that?”
“Shortly before four o’clock.”
“How did he know where you were?”
“He phoned my house. When I called home for messages, the girl who comes in three times a week to do cleaning told me a Mr. Lutts had phoned about half-past three and told her it was very important he get in touch with me at once, and she told him he could reach me at the beauty parlor.”
“What did he want?”
“Blackmail.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Go ahead, tell me all the details. Don’t hold back anything.”
“He was clever — greedy and diabolically clever.”
“Never mind all that now. Tell me what happened.”
“He told me to get in the car with him. He said he wanted to show me something. There was something in his manner... well... I was suspicious.”
“Go on,” Mason told her.
“In some way, Mr. Mason, he had found out that I was the person who had told you to get the stock for me.”
“How did he find that out?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought and thought. I haven’t the faintest idea. But he knew. He was certain of his ground.”
“Go on,” Mason said, “tell me what happened.”
“Lutts tried... a sort of blackmail. He had me where I had to... to do what he said.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t dare quarrel with him, Mr. Mason. If Enny had found out that I was the one who had commissioned you to purchase that stock, if he realized that I was trying to make trouble for him in the business deal with Roxy Claffin... well, that would have been the last straw. He would have walked out on me cold. And Lutts threatened to go to Enny and tell him.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“Of course, George Lutts didn’t realize what I was trying to do. He thought that I had some inside information. He also thought I was trying to throw a terrific scare into Roxy and make her let her holdings go cheap. Lutts knew Enny would never have an interest adverse to one of his clients, so Lutts decided I was making a fast play and that I’d do almost anything to keep Enny from finding out.
“So he told me I had to tell him, otherwise he’d go to Enny. You can see what a spot I was in and the reason motivating his actions. If he could purchase stock at eight dollars a share, and I had inside information that made the stock worth over sixteen a share, he naturally wanted to load up with stock. But he didn’t want to sink any more money in unless he knew the reason for my interest.”
“It never occurred to him what it was?”
“No, he just thought there was some inside information. He thought my motives were purely financial.”
“So what did he do?”
“He told me to get in the car with him. He drove up toward the property, trying to make me tell him what it was I knew, and finally, he drove all the way up to the place on the hill.”
“Parked his car?”
She nodded.
“You went in the house?”
“Not then.”
“Who opened the door?”
“He did. He had a key.”
“What happened?”
“I was in something of a panic. I knew that once he went in that house and got up to the third floor, if he went up that far, he’d find where I’d been watching. Once he found that, he’d put two and two together and then he’d be in a position really to blackmail me.”
“Did you try to keep him from going in?”
“Of course I did.”
“And it didn’t work?”
“I thought if I sat in the car and didn’t make a move to get out, he’d change his mind.”
“But he didn’t?”
“He almost did, Mr. Mason. He sat there and talked for a minute or two, but he kept thinking that there was something in the house which accounted for my interest in the stock. I saw that he was determined to go in.”
“So he went in.”
“Yes.”
“And you sat in the car?”
“Yes.”
“Doing what?”
“Pretending to be just as completely unconcerned as possible. I sat there with the radio going, listening to some jazz music.”
“All right, what happened?”
“Well, after three or four or five minutes, it suddenly occurred to me that if I went in there, I just might be able to distract his attention so that he wouldn’t find where I had fixed up that room upstairs, where I did my watching. You see, if he’d ever told Enny that I’d been up there spying... well, Enny would have resented it terribly. I just couldn’t let him find that room.”
“So what did you do?”
“So I shut off the radio, jumped out of the car, ran to the door and called him. I thought I could cook up some sort of a story to get him back down.”
“You called, and what happened?”
“He didn’t answer.”
“So what did you do?”
“I started up the stairs.”
“Then what?”
“I kept calling his name.”
“Anyone who was in there could hear you coming?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And what did you do?”
“I got to the second floor. He wasn’t there. I started up the steps to the third floor, and there he was, lying head down with blood coming out of his chest and — oh, it was the most ghastly thing you’ve ever seen.”
“Did you hear any shots?”
“No.”
“How many holes in his chest?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
“But you know he was dead?”
“I reached down and felt his wrist. There wasn’t any pulse at all.”
“Then what?”
“And then I heard this person on the floor above me.”