“Okay,” Drake said.
The two men walked over to the bar. Mason slapped a five-dollar bill on the counter and said, “A couple of Old Fashioneds, and tell Bill Golding we want to talk with him.”
“Who does?” the bartender asked.
“We do.”
“Who are you?”
Mason slid one of his business cards across the moist mahogany bar. “Take that to him,” he said, “but don’t forget the Old Fashioneds.”
The bartender nodded, summoned a floorman and spoke to him in an undertone, his eyes on Mason and Drake. He handed the card to the floorman, who looked at it, scowled, and vanished through a door. The bartender mixed up the Old Fashioneds and was just serving them when the floorman returned and nodded at the bartender, then stationed himself by the door.
“Okay,” the bartender said, “Golding will see you.” He made change out of the five dollars. Mason said to Paul Drake, “Cover this end, Paul. Keep your eyes open.” He left his liquor and walked across the room. The floorman opened the door. Mason pushed his way through heavy green hangings and into an office. A man stared coldly at him from behind a desk. A woman, some years younger, her contours displayed by a clinging blue evening gown, stood near the corner of the desk. Her hair was glossy black and filled with highlights. Her full red lips held no smile. Her brilliant black eyes blazed with emotions she strove to suppress. Full-throated, well-nourished, she seemed seductively full of life, in striking contrast to the man who sat behind the desk, his waxy skin stretched so tightly across his prominent cheekbones that there hardly seemed enough left to cover the teeth, which showed in that ghastly grin seen on starving people. Against the pallor of his skin, just below where it crossed his cheekbones, were twin patches of brilliant coloring. His eyes were as dark as those of the woman, but where hers sparkled with vitality, his glittered feverishly.
“Sit down,” the man said in a husky voice.
Mason sat down on a leather davenport and crossed his long legs in front of him. In the seconds of silence which followed, it became apparent that the man was not going to introduce the woman, equally apparent that she did not intend to depart. Mason took his cigarette case from his pocket, glanced at the woman and asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
“On the contrary,” she said, “I’ll have one with you.”
She moved over to Mason’s side, the muscles of her well-developed figure sliding smoothly under the blue satin of her evening gown.
“Don’t get up,” she said.
Mason struck a match, and she steadied his hand in hers as she held the flame to the cigarette.
Bill Golding, behind the desk, husked, “Okay, what do you want?”
“Where are the stones you got from George Trent?” Mason asked.
The man behind the desk moved uneasily. The red patches of color on his cheeks intensified. “So,” he said, “you’re going to sing that song, are you?”
“Take it easy, Bill,” the woman remarked, seating herself beside Mason, her bare arm propped on the back of the davenport, her body so close that Mason could detect the faint scent of perfume behind her ears.
Golding said, “I didn’t get any stones from George Trent.”
“A couple of hours ago — perhaps three hours ago,” Mason went on, “Austin Cullens was up here.”
“I don’t know any Austin Cullens.”
“He’s a big man,” Mason said, “around six feet, somewhere in the forties, curly chestnut hair, a big diamond ring and a diamond scarf pin.”
“Haven’t seen him.”
“He’d have been up here, asking questions about George Trent and talking about redeeming gems Trent had left with you.”
“He hasn’t been here. No man like that has been in here.”
“I think he has,” Mason said calmly.
“I’m lying, is that it?”
Mason grinned mirthlessly. “Let’s say you’re mistaken,” he said.
“Well, I’m not lying and I’m not mistaken. The way you came in is the way out. You’d better start while you can still go under your own power.”
Mason said, “Nice radio you have there on your desk.”
“I like it,” Golding said.
“Why not turn that switch,” Mason said, “and listen to some music?”
“I’m not demonstrating radios, thank you.”
“The reason I asked,” Mason went on, in a conversational voice, “is because I notice that it’s turned over to the short wave dial and the hand points to police calls. Perhaps you heard the announcement that Cullens had been murdered.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Golding said.
Mason maintained his calmly conversational tone. “Cullens stopped to telephone while he was on his way up here. Perhaps that will change the situation some.”
“You’re nuts!” Golding said.
“Of course,” Mason went on, “I can appreciate your position. Running a place of this kind, you’re not anxious to attract any publicity. With the police investigating the murder, you’d prefer to be dealt out.”
“Go on,” Golding said with a sneer, “you’re singing a solo. Don’t think I’m going to make it a duet.”
“Of course,” Mason remarked, “if you wanted to be friendly, we could talk things over. If you didn’t, I could telephone my friend, Sergeant Holcomb, on Homicide, and give him a tip. He’s accused me of holding out lately. This would square things a lot.”
“Go ahead,” Golding said. “See if I care. Telephone the whole damn force if you want to.”
“No,” Mason said casually, “Holcomb would be enough. He’d come up here and start asking questions — not only of you two, but of some of the customers in the front room. Perhaps they saw Cullens go in or come out.”
The man behind the desk stared straight ahead, with steady, expressionless eyes.
Mason laughed and said, “That hurt, didn’t it?”
Golding moistened his thin lips with the tip of his tongue. His eyes shifted uneasily to glance questioningly at the woman who sat at Mason’s side.
She said, in her full-toned, throaty voice, “All right, sweetheart, he’s got us.”
“He’s bluffing,” Golding said.
“He may be bluffing,” she retorted, “but he’s bluffing with the high hand.”
Mason, without taking his eyes from Golding, said over his shoulder, “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” she told him. “Thank your luck. You’d better go out and play roulette. You’re getting the breaks tonight.”
Golding said, “All right, Mason, he came here. He said he wanted to see me. He came in and pulled that stuff about me having picked up some stones from George Trent. I told him he was nuts, that George Trent hadn’t been in here for two months. We argued for a while, and then he got up and went out.”
“That was all?” Mason asked.
“That was all.”
“That doesn’t coincide with the facts the way I have them,” Mason said.
“All right,” Golding told him, “suppose you tell your story.”
“Cullens,” Mason said, “found out that you had some stones that you’d picked up from Trent. He told you they didn’t belong to Trent. You had an argument about whether you could hold them if Trent didn’t have title to them. You had about six thousand tied up in them. Cullens offered to pay off half the indebtedness and take over the stones. You didn’t like that. So Cullens showed you you were in a spot because Trent didn’t own the stones. You didn’t want any lawsuits. You took the money and gave Cullens the stones. Cullens went out and someone bumped him off.”
“Where’d you get that pipe dream?” Golding asked.
“A little bird told me.”