“But surely,” Mason said, “you don’t think Miss Dail would resort to any such tactics?”
“I don’t know what tactics she’d restort to,” Mrs. Newberry said. “She’s selfish, spoiled, rich, and ruthless.
“Why, she’s just a kid,” Mason exclaimed.
“She’s twenty-five,” Mrs. Newberry pointed out, “and she’s done lots of living. She’s a good polo player, holds an aviator’s license, has a yacht of her own, shoots par golf and... Well, a young woman of twenty-five these days is quite apt to have done a lot of living. I’d consider her capable of almost anything.”
“Tell me some more about the theft of the picture,” Mason said.
“We packed early,” she said. “I packed my husband’s suitcase. Belle had given him a picture inscribed, ‘To Daddy, With Love from Belle.’ I don’t know, Mr. Mason, whether you’ve noticed that my daughter resembles Winnie Joyce, the actress, but—”
“I’d already noticed and commented on the resemblance,” Mason said. “I believe she tries to accentuate that resemblance, doesn’t she?”
“Of course she does,” Mrs. Newberry agreed promptly. “People comment about it and it tickles her pink. She sent to the studio for a fan-mail photograph of Winne Joyce. Then she had a photographer take her picture in the same pose and with the same lighting effects. It was one of those pictures she inscribed and gave to my husband. It was in an oval desk frame. I personally packed that picture in his bag a little before three o’clock this afternoon. After the bag was packed, he locked it. It wasn’t unlocked again until ten o’clock tonight, half an hour before the ship sailed. I was unpacking the baggage in the stateroom and he took the keys from his pocket and unlocked it.”
“And the frame was gone?” Mason asked.
“No,” she said. “Belle’s picture had been taken from the frame and a picture of Miss Joyce substituted.”
She opened her purse, took out an oval desk frame and handed it to Mason. Mason held it so that the light from one of the deck lamps showed the photograph. “Notice the inscription, ” Mrs. Newberry said.
Mason deciphered, “Sincerely yours. Winnie Joyce.”
“Perhaps the photograph had been substituted before you packed,” Mason suggested.
“No. I noticed particularly. You see, my daughter’s happiness has been on my mind ever since I heard this about the Products Refining Company. I looked at her picture when I packed it and hoped that she’d always be happy and smiling as she was in that picture.”
“Well,” Mason said, “there’s no use beating around the bush. Go to your husband. Call for a showdown. After all, Mrs. Newberry, you may be alarming yourself needlessly. He may have won the money in a lottery.”
“But I have talked with him. It doesn’t get me anywhere. He simply says he won some money in a lottery. That’s all I can get out of him.”
“Did you ever accuse him of embezzling money from the Products Refining Company?” Mason asked.
“Not in so many words, but I intimated that I thought he might have.”
“And what did he say?”
“Told me I was crazy, that he’d won a lottery.”
“You don’t know what lottery?”
“He said something about a sweepstakes once, and the other times he said lottery.”
“Well, call for a showdown,” Mason said impatiently. “Ask him just what lottery it was. After all, you’re his wife. You’re entitled to know.”
She shook her head emphatically. “It would never do any good to talk with Carl that way. He’d lie out of it and it would simply make matters worse. When I have another talk with him, I want to have all the cards in my hand so I can play them. I want to know.”
“What do you want to know?” Mason asked.
“I want to be absolutely certain,” she said, “that he did embezzle that money. That’s where I want your help.”
“What did you want me to do?” Mason asked.
“Get in communication with your office,” she said. “Have your associates make a quiet investigation and find out whether Carl really embezzled the money.”
“And if he did, then what?”
“Then,” she said, “I’m going to take steps to protect Belle and safeguard her happiness as much as I can.”
“How?” Mason asked.
She started to say something, then checked herself. After a moment, she said, “I don’t know — yet. I’d want your advice.”
Mason leaned over the rail and looked down at the deck below. The figures of Belle Newberry and Roy Hungerford had moved close together until they appeared as one dark silhouette.
“Very well,” Mason promised. “I’ll see what I can find out,” and cut short her thanks to go to the wireless room.
Using his confidential code, Mason sent a wireless to Paul Drake, of the Drake Detective Agency in Los Angeles, asking him to investigate a C.W. Moar who had worked for the Products Refining Company to investigate the winners of all sweepstakes within the past four months, and find out if any might have been C.W. Moar, using either his own or a fictitious name, and added as an afterthought a request to ascertain if Winnie Joyce, the picture actress, had a sister.
Chapter 2
Sun sparkled from the crested tops of restless waves as Perry Mason paced the deck, enjoying the fresh air and the morning sun. His hands were thrust deep in the pockets of a double-breasted coat, his rubber-soled shoes trod lightly along the teakwood deck. The warm breeze ruffled his wavy hair. He had circled the deck for the third time when the heavy door from the forward social hall was pushed open an inch or two. Della Street shouldered it open, to stand with wind-whipped skirts while Belle Newberry stepped across the high threshold.
As they released the door and the wind pushed it against the automatic door check, Mason, walking up behind them, called “Ship Ahoy!” and, as they turned, said to Della Street, “The other side is less windy.”
Della nodded, the warm wind blowing tendrils of hair across her face. “Belle,” she said, “this is the boss. Chief, I’d like to have you meet Belle Newberry, my roommate. We’re working up an appetite for breakfast.”
“Let’s go,” Mason suggested.
With a girl on each arm, he started forward along the deck. Rounding the bow, the wind pushed them on down the sloping incline, into the lee of the deck. Belle Newberry put her hair back into place, laughed, and said, “That’s what’s known as a wind-blown bob. I’ve been hearing a lot about you, Mr. Mason.”
“If it’s bad,” Mason told her, “you can believe it, if it’s good, it’s slander.”
She faced him with laughing, dark eyes, full red lips, parted to reveal teeth which glinted like whitecaps in the sun. The silk blouse, open at the neck, disclosed the sweep of her throat, the rounded curve of her firm breasts. “I saw you and Moms talking last night,” she said. “I’ll bet Moms told you all about the family mystery.”
“Mystery?” Mason asked.
“Uh huh,” she said. “Don’t stand there and act innocent.”
Della Street flashed Mason a quick glance. “What’s the family mystery, Belle?” she asked.
“The disappearing portrait,” she said. “Mother packed my autographed picture in Dad’s bag and locked the bag. When they unpacked, my picture was gone from the frame, and someone had inserted one of Winnie Joyce, my double. Now, what do you know about that?”
“I,” Della Street said, glancing reproachfully at Perry Mason, “know nothing about it. What does your mother think about it?”