Della Street looked up as Mason unlocked the door of his private office and came striding into the room.
“Oh — oh,” she said. “Was it as bad as all that?”
“Worse,” Mason told her, taking off his hat and throwing it on a chair. “I’m getting fed up with things. I’ve bought a pig in a poke, and it’s the last time.”
“But Paul Drake telephoned that you’d picked her up, and that everything seemed all right.”
“Drake,” Mason said, “is a damn poor judge of feminine character. I don’t know but what I’m not as bad… When did Drake telephone?”
“A few minutes ago. He said he guessed there was no need for him to keep a shadow on the woman, but he’d done it just on general principles, that she was Adelle Hastings, that you’d left her in a cocktail lounge, that she’d gone out right after you had left — within a matter of minutes — and had gone straight to her apartment. If you’ll give me the other half of that ten thousand dollars, Chief, I’ll take it down to the bank and make a deposit.”
Mason laughed mirthlessly.
“What’s the matter? Haven’t you got it?”
“No.”
“Didn’t she have it?”
“She must have it,” Mason said, “and she’s taking me for a ride to the tune of ten grand.”
“How do you figure?”
Mason spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. “A sucker,” he said. “Just a plain pushover. I was so damn conscientious that I stuck my finger in the porridge and started stirring. Now I’ve stirred out all the lumps, and haven’t anything to show for it except a burned finger.”
“You mean she isn’t going to give you the other half of that bill?”
“Why should she? Peltham is satisfied, and she’s satisfied. Things are moving fine. She has an iron-clad alibi for Tuesday morning. At least, she says she has, and I give her credit for being smart enough to be telling the truth. If she fixed up an alibi, she fixed up a good one.
“I’ve prodded Holcomb into the position of bringing pressure to bear all along the line, to fix the time of that murder as immediately after noon on Tuesday. I have the smaller piece of that ten-thousand-dollar bill. I can’t do anything with it until I get the other half… If I’m a big enough sap to work for nothing, why should anyone pay me for it?”
She said thoughtfully, “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”
He nodded moodily. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Drake says his men shadowed Abigail Tump, that she led them to the man he thinks is the secretary for the orphan asylum you want. He also picked up a copy of the ad which was left in the Contractor’s Journal by Miss Hastings.”
“What does the ad say?” Mason asked, dropping into his big swivel chair, elevating his feet to the desk, and taking a cigarette from the office humidor.
Della Street consulted her shorthand notebook and read, “ ‘Have nothing to add to situation. Granting interview this time would be unwise. You’re doing fine. P.’ ”
Mason said, “That’s rubbing it in… I’m doing fine, am I? Yes, Della. Take this down. Type it out and rush it over to the Contractor’s Journal. Have them carry it in their earliest possible issue: ‘P. I don’t like to contract for work without blueprints. Arrange to deliver detailed plans and specifications or anticipate serious defects in finished structure.’ Now read that back to me, Della.”
She read it back to him.
Mason nodded grimly. “Okay,” he said.
She looked at him with eyes that showed a trace of concern. “Wouldn’t it be better, Chief, to sit tight now and let things develop?”
“I’m not built that way,” he said. “It would probably be the prudent thing to do. In any event, it would be the conventional thing to do, but you never get far being prudent and conventional. Right now, this case is wide open. If I sit back and wait, it’ll crystallize against the client I’ll eventually have to represent.”
“But if you keep doing things which are advantageous to that client, you’ll never be paid,” she pointed out.
Mason said, “From now on the things I’m going to do will make their hair stand up… Take that ad down to the Contractor’s Journal and leave word in Drake’s office that he’s to come in here as soon as he gets back to the office… That little devil, Adelle Hastings, figures she can trump my aces and make me like it.”
“How can you stop her playing it that way, Chief, as long as you keep working on the case?”
Mason grinned, but without humor. “I’m going to make it no-trumps,” he said.
Della Street adjusted her hat in front of the office mirror. “Well,” she observed, “there’s no use telling you to be careful.”
“Whoever got anything in life by being careful?” Mason retorted. “Every time you stop to figure what the other fellow’s going to do, you unconsciously figure what you’d do in his place. The result is that you’re not fighting him, but yourself. You always come to a stalemate. Every time you think of a move, you think of a perfect defense.
“The best fighters don’t worry about what the other man may do. And if they keep things moving fast enough, the other man is too busy to do much thinking.”
“Something tells me,” Della Street grinned, as she made for the door, “that things are going to move fast.”
Paul Drake’s voice from the corridor said, cheerfully, “Against the light, your legs are swell, Della. They’d get by in front of any window.”
“Sometime when you’re not too busy, tell Perry all about them, will you, Paul?”
Drake, in a rare good humor, circled Della Street and edged in at the open door. “Gosh, Perry,” he said, “that was a slick stunt you pulled with that purse. I thought I’d die laughing. When she called the officer and said you were annoying her, I thought I’d have to appear in the police court to give you a good character reference.”
“What’s all this about?” Della Street asked.
“Your boss,” Drake said, “has become a purse-snatcher.”
Mason said, “Come in here and close that damn door. I don’t want all the tenants in the office listening in on my conferences.”
“If Paul’s through admiring my figure, I’ll be going,” Della observed.
Drake clicked the door shut behind him.
“What the devil was that last crack about?” Mason asked.
Drake grinned. “Don’t you ever notice your secretary’s legs?”
Mason said, “For God’s sake, snap out of it! There’s work to be done.”
“What sort of work?”
By way of answer, Mason picked up his desk telephone, plugged it in on the office line, and said, “Gertie, I want you to get Dr. Finley C. Willmont on the line. You’ll find him at his office. His nurse will tell you he’s seeing patients and can’t come to the telephone. Tell her it’s Perry Mason calling, and it’s important. I want to talk with Dr. Willmont personally.”
“Right away,” Gertie promised. “Do you want to wait?”
“No, ring me when you have him on the line.”
Mason hung up and said to Paul Drake, “That little devil’s holding out on me.”
“Della?” Drake asked in surprise.
“Come down to earth,” Mason said. “Adelle Hastings.”
“I thought you had her eating out of your hand.”
“No,” Mason said. “I bought her a drink. She drank it out of a glass.”
“You act as though someone had put a burr under your saddle blanket,” Drake said.
“Someone has.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, can’t you take the burr out?”
Mason said, “I don’t want to. I prefer to start bucking.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You have the name and address of that bookkeeper for The Hidden Home Society?”
“Yes.”
“Who is he, where does he live, and what does he look like?”
“Arthmont A. Freel, Montway Rooms, around sixty, and mousy, a little wisp of a fellow with stooped shoulders, faded eyes, faded hair, faded clothes, and a faded personality, shabby in a genteel sort of way. Put him in a group of three, and you’d lose him in the crowd. He doesn’t stand out any more than cigar ashes on a gray rug on a misty morning.”
Mason said, “Feeling pretty good, aren’t you, Paul?”
“Uh huh.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Just the way I feel. I got an awful bang out of seeing you turn the tables on that girl when she tried to call the cop. You sure put that one over, Perry. The cop was nodding to himself when you walked away, as though he’d discharged his duties to the taxpayers in noble shape and was entitled to a merit badge.”
The phone on Mason’s desk rang. He picked it up and heard Gertie say, “Dr. Willmont’s coming on,” and then a moment later, Dr. Willmont’s crisply professional voice saying, “Yes, Perry. What is it?”
Mason said, “I want a blood donor, Doctor — about a pint.”
“What type?” Dr. Willmont asked.
“The type that will keep its mouth shut,” Mason said.
“I know, but what type blood?”
“Human blood,” Mason said. “That’s all I require.”
Dr. Willmont hesitated. “This is rather unusual. You can’t have a transfer, Perry, without getting types of both the donor and the patient. You…”
“There isn’t any patient,” Mason said. “There isn’t going to be any transfusion. I simply want a donor.”
“But what do you want done with the blood?”
“Put it in a bottle,” Mason said, “and forget about it.”
“How would you want it handled?”
“That’s up to you. I’ll pick up the blood while it’s still fresh. I’ll keep in touch with your office and let them know just when and where I’ll want it. You get the donor lined up.”
Dr. Willmont hesitated. “I suppose I could explain it was for laboratory purposes,” he said. “Could you keep me out of it, Perry?”
“Uh huh.”
“What do you want it for?”
“Purposes of a laboratory experiment in criminology,” Mason said glibly.
“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll try and arrange it.”
“I’ll call you later,” Mason said. “You make the arrangements and have the donor on hand.”
He hung up, and turned to Paul Drake. “Okay, Paul, let’s go.”
“Where?” Drake asked.
“The Montway Rooms,” Mason said.
“Your car or mine?”
“Yours.”
“Now?”
“Right now. Let’s get going.”
Drake’s loquacious good humor evaporated under the influence of the lawyer’s savage grimness. He essayed a quip or two, then lapsed into a silence which persisted until he parked the car in front of the rooming house. “This is the joint,” he said. “Are you going to get rough with him, Perry?”
“I’m going to get rough with everyone,” the lawyer said, “until I smoke someone into the open. Come on, let’s go.”
In silence they opened the car doors, slammed them shut, and entered the rooming house. There was no one at the desk, and Drake said, “It’s on the second floor near the back. I have the number of the room.”
They climbed creaking stairs, pounded their way down a thin ribbon of worn, faded carpet which stretched between the rows of doors down the length of the upper corridor. Drake silently motioned to a door.
Mason knocked.
A man’s reedy voice on the other side of the door said, “Who is it?”
“The name’s Mason,” the lawyer said.
The voice sounded now closer to the door. “What is it?”
“News.”
A key clicked in the lock. The door opened, and a man, whose face hardly came to Mason’s shoulders, looked up over the top of steel-rimmed reading spectacles. “What sort of news?” he asked.
“Bad,” Mason said, and walked in.
Drake followed the lawyer into the room. Mason flashed him a swift glance of inquiry, and the detective nodded almost imperceptibly. Drake moved over to a chair by the window and sat down. The chair was still warm from human occupancy. Freel, still holding a newspaper he’d been reading between thumb and forefinger, glanced from one to the other. “I don’t think I know you,” he said.
“You will,” Mason said. “Sit down.”
Freel sat on the bed. Mason possessed the only other chair in the room, a rickety, cane-bottomed affair which creaked as he sat down.
It was a small, cheerless bedroom with an iron bedstead, a thin mattress, and a mirror which gave back distorted reflections. Dripping water had left a pathway of reddish incrustations spreading fan-shaped from beneath each faucet in the washstand. There were only the two chairs, a rug worn thin from much use, a wardrobe closet, the bed, and some faded lithographs as furnishings of the room.
Beneath the bed appeared the ends of a suitcase and a handbag. A worn, tweed overcoat was folded across the white enameled foot of the iron bed. The grayish white counterpane had been patched in two places and was worn almost through in another place.
Freel nervously pushed his newspaper to one side. In the silence of the room, the rattle of the paper sounded unusually loud. “What is it?” he asked.
“You know what it is,” Mason said, watching him narrowly.
“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea what brought you here, or what you’re talking about.”
“Your name’s Freel?”
“Yes.”
“You were a bookkeeper and accountant for The Hidden Home Welfare Society years ago?”
The man’s nervousness increased perceptibly. “Yes,” he said.
“What,” Mason asked, “are you doing here?”
“Looking for work.”
Mason’s snort was contemptuous. “Try again,” he said. “This time try telling the truth for a change.”
“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what right you have to make these insinuations.”
“I could make accusations,” Mason said.
The stooped shoulders straightened. There was a sudden glitter of hard defiance in the faded gray eyes. “Not against me, you can’t,” the man said.
“No?” Mason asked sarcastically.
“No.”
Mason suddenly pointed a forefinger squarely at the man’s chest. “I could,” he said, “for instance, accuse you of the murder of Albert Tidings.”
The little man on the bed jumped as though an electrical discharge had sparked from Mason’s forefinger to his chest. His mouth sagged in astonishment and consternation. “Me!” he shrilled in a voice high-pitched with fear and indignation.
“You,” Mason said, and lit a cigarette.
The silence of the room was broken only by the creak of the bedsprings as Freel shifted his position uncomfortably.
“Are you,” he asked, “the police?”
“This man,” Mason said, indicating Paul Drake with a gesture of his thumb, “is a detective,” and then added after a moment, in a lower voice, “private. He’s working on that Tidings case.”
“What’s he got to do with me?”
“You mean what’s he going to do to you? When did you last see Tidings alive?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You mean you don’t know Tidings?”
“No,” Freel said defiantly. “I don’t know who he is.”
“You’ve been reading about it in the paper,” Mason said.
“Oh, that! You mean the man who was found dead?”
“That’s the way murdered people are generally found.”
“I just happened to be reading about him. I didn’t even connect the name.”
“Well,” Mason said, “the name connected you.”
Freel straightened and inched forward to sit on the extreme edge of the thin mattress. “Now you look here,” he said. “You can’t come in here and pull this kind of stuff on me. You can’t…”
“Forget it,” Mason interrupted. “Quit trying to dodge the question. When did you last see Tidings alive?”
“I never saw him. I never knew him.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Yes.”
Mason just laughed.
There was another interval of strained, uncomfortable silence broken by Mason’s sudden question. “When did you last see Mrs. Tump?”
“Who?”
“Tump.”
“You look here,” Freel protested, in his thin, high-pitched voice, “I didn’t murder anyone. I… I had some business dealings with Mrs. Tump, that’s all.”
“And how about Tidings?”
Freel averted his eyes, “I didn’t know him.”
“Guess again,” Mason said, “and you’d better guess right this time.”
“Well, I’d only met him casually. He… he hunted me up.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
“Well, in a way, yes.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A week or ten days ago.”
“You didn’t hunt him up?”
“No.”
“Did you hunt up Mrs. Tump?”
“Well… What did you say your name was?”
“Mason.”
“You’re Perry Mason, the lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Why, you’re representing Byrl Gailord.”
“Mrs. Tump told you that?”
“Yes.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“She said you were going to get Byrl’s money for her.”
“What do you know about Byrl?”
Freel settled back on the bed. He said unctuously, “Understand, Mr. Mason, I wasn’t a party to any of that original fraud. The Hidden Home Welfare Society was guilty of numerous irregularities. You know how it is in that baby business. A couple wants to adopt a baby. It takes quite a while to get one that’s been properly vouched for and whose parents are known. There’s quite a demand for such children and always has been. Sometimes couples have to wait a year or even longer after their application is put in… A baby’s something people don’t like to wait for. That is, lots of them don’t.
“A society like The Hidden Home can play the game coming and going. People go there and pay to have babies that will be released to the Home for adoption. A good many times the mother tries to arrange with the Home to support the child. She thinks she’s going to work and keep on making payments. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred she can’t do it.”
The little old man stopped and cleared his throat nervously. His eyes peered furtively over the tops of the reading glasses which had slid down on his nose, studying the faces of his listeners in the hopes that he could read their reactions in their facial expressions.
“Go on,” Mason said.
“That’s all there is. If the homes are on the square, they wait until the mother quits payments before they do anything about it, but sometimes they take a gamble.”
“What do you mean by taking a gamble?” Mason asked.
“They just go ahead and release the child for adoption… You see, a very young baby gets a better price than an older child.”
“Why?” Mason asked.
“After a child is four or five years old — old enough to remember about life in the Home — it realizes that it’s been adopted. Most people never tell children they’ve been adopted. They want the child to look on them as its real father and mother.”
“All right,” Mason said. “How about Byrl Gailord?”
“They took a gamble with her — and they lost.”
“Where did they get her in the first place?”
Freel said glibly, “She was Russian. Her parents were killed in a shipwreck. Mrs. Tump left her with them. At that time, she was older than the Home liked to have children, but with the heritage she had, it was a cinch for them to get a high price.”
Freel moistened his lip with his tongue and started nodding his head up and down, giving silent emphasis to his words.
Mason studied the man narrowly for several seconds. Abruptly, he said, “Mrs. Tump has a daughter, hasn’t she?”
Freel’s head jerked in a quick half-turn as his eyes searched Mason’s. “A daughter?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why… what sort of a daughter?”
“A daughter,” Mason said. “You know what the word means, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course… I’m sure I can’t remember. A lot of those things have escaped my recollection — little details. I presume they got Mrs. Tump’s history when the child was given to them.”
“Why would they do that?” Mason asked.
“Oh, they want to know all about the child, everything they can find out. They usually make the girls give them the names of the fathers. The girls hate to do that… It’s strange the way they try to protect the men who have betrayed them. It’s the natural loyalty women have for men. Women are a lot more loyal to men than men are to women, Mr. Mason.”
Mason took a last drag at his cigarette and ground it out in the ash tray.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get back to Tidings.”
Freel said, “Tidings tried to pump me. He wanted to find out everything I knew. I think he was looking for some flaw somewhere, something that would show that Byrl Gailord wasn’t…”
“Wasn’t what?” Mason prompted.
“Wasn’t entitled to the money.”
Mason stared thoughtfully for several seconds at the faded carpet. Freel studied him with the anxious scrutiny of a marksman who is anxious to see just where his bullets have struck in the target.
“Did the Home investigate that story about the torpedoed ship?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed, Mr. Mason. They made a very complete investigation. They always want information about the parentage, you know. That information means dollars and cents to any home.”
Mason got up from his chair, walked over to the narrow window with its dingy lace curtain over the lower portion of it. He raised a tattered, green shade, and stood with his elbows resting on the molding which divided the upper from the lower part of the window, and stared meditatively down into a dingy alley and at the blank wall of a brick building opposite.
Freel turned to Drake. “You believe me, don’t you?” he asked.
“Sure,” Drake said carelessly.
“Know Coleman Reeger?” Mason asked, still staring out of the window.
“No,” Freel said. “Who’s he?”
“You don’t know anything about him?”
“No.”
“Ever heard the name?”
“No, I’m quite certain I haven’t. I have a good memory for names.”
“You take a lot of prompting,” Mason said. “It took quite a while to get you to remember Tidings.”
“I was lying about Tidings,” Freel confessed. “I thought it would be better not to let anyone know… Well, you know how it is.”
“He came to you?”
“Yes. He wanted to bribe me.”
“What did Mrs. Tump say when you told her that?”
There was sudden panic in Freel’s voice. “I didn’t tell her,” he said. “You mustn’t tell her. She must never know about that.”
Mason continued standing at the window. The tips of his fingers drummed thoughtfully on the narrow projection against which his elbows were propped. Suddenly, he whirled to face Freel. “You’re lying,” he charged.
“I am not, Mr. Mason. I swear to you that I’m telling the God’s truth.”
Mason said, “I see the whole business now. How much are you getting out of it?”
“Nothing, I’m simply giving my testimony in an attempt to right a wrong in which I feel I have unwittingly participated… Of course, I knew what was going on there at the Home, but then, I was just an accountant. I had charge of the books, and that was all.”
“Where are those books?”
“I don’t know. I was discharged.”
“But you remember a lot of details?”
“Yes.”
Mason, watching him with level-lidded intensity, said, “Your testimony wouldn’t be worth a damn, Freel. It’s too long ago. No jury would trust your memory.”
“I made notes,” Freel said. “I made a complete set of notes of certain cases that impressed me as being… well, being apt to come up again.”
“Why?”
“Because if I were ever called on to testify, I wanted to be certain that I could give the true facts.”
Mason said, “You mean you wanted something for blackmail.”
Freel’s shoulders seemed to slump. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his eyes avoiding those of Mason.
Mason said, “Look up at me, Freel.”
For a moment Freel continued to avoid his eyes, then, with an obvious effort, looked up at the lawyer.
“What’s back of all this business about Byrl Gailord?” Mason asked.
“Just what I told you,” Freel said, and his eyes slithered away from those of the lawyer.
“Look up at me, Freel.”
Mason waited until the man had slowly raised his eyes.
“Now,” Mason said, “I’ll tell you the whole business. Byrl Gailord is no more the daughter of a grand duke than I am. Byrl Gailord is the illegitimate daughter of Mrs. Tump’s daughter. That grand duke business was invented within the last few months by Mrs. Tump to give the child a background of respectability. Gailord’s will referred to her as an adopted child. She inherited a lot of money under that will, but that will also disclosed the fact that she had been taken from a welfare home somewhere, and had never been formally adopted, that she was the illegitimate offspring of an illicit affair… No, don’t shift your eyes, Freel. Look up at me. Keep looking at me… Mrs. Tump wanted to get the girl into society. Byrl Gailord attracted the interest and attention of Coleman Reeger. Reeger’s family are high society with a capital H.S. They’d never have consented to a marriage with a young woman of Byrl Gailord’s real antecedents, so Mrs. Tump took it on herself to furnish a fictitious background. She knew she couldn’t do it by herself, so she hunted you up and planted you as a witness.”
Freel fidgeted. The bedsprings squeaked uneasy accompaniment.
“How much?” Mason asked.
“Fifteen thousand dollars,” Freel said in a thin, reedy voice.
“How much of it have you actually received?”
“One thousand. The other comes when… when…”
“When she marries Reeger?” Mason asked.
“Yes,” Freel said, his eyes still avoiding those of the lawyer.
“Go ahead and tell me about it.”
“That’s all there was to it. I was out of work, and desperate. Mrs. Tump had detectives hunt me up. She made me this proposition. That thousand dollars looked big to me. I’d have agreed to anything.”
“And that’s all bunk about this Russian blood in the girl’s veins?”
“Not entirely. The father is a Russian, the son of a headwaiter who was a refugee from Russia.”
Mason abruptly turned away from the little man and started pacing the floor. His hands were thrust deeply down in his trousers pockets. His eyes from time to time swung to study Freel’s face.
Drake, manifestly uncomfortable in the conventional, straight-backed, rickety chair, watched Mason in silent interest.
After several minutes of thoughtful floor-pacing, Mason said, with slow deliberation, “I can’t understand what interest Tidings had in bribing you to change your testimony… Exactly what did he want?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Mason,” Freel said hastily. “It never got that far. He tried to bribe me, and I let it be known right at the start that I wasn’t interested — that I wasn’t that sort of a man.”
Mason said, “But you were that sort of a man. You’d let Mrs. Tump bribe you to testify to a lot of lies.”
“But that was different, Mr. Mason. This man wanted me to sell Mrs. Tump out.”
“Why?”
“I tell you, I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“Exactly what did he want?”
“He wanted me to change my testimony.”
“In what way? Did he want you to tell the truth?”
“No. He didn’t know the truth.”
“Well, what did he want?”
“I tell you, I don’t know.”
“How did he get in touch with you?”
“I don’t know that. He found me the same way you did. I was here in my room when he came to me.”
“More than once?”
“No, just once.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. Around a week ago.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he could make it worth my while if I’d cooperate with him.”
“Co-operate how?”
“Well, something about changing my story.”
“But what earthly advantage would that give him?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know. I tell you, I don’t know anything at all about it.”
“How much money did Mrs. Tump give you?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“When?”
“That was two months ago.”
“And you took a little while fixing up your story — perhaps forging a few records?”
“Well, naturally, I wanted to make my story stand up.”
Mason said suddenly, “Freel, you went to Tidings. He didn’t come to you. Your first contact was with Tidings. You wanted to sell him information about Byrl Gailord. Because he was the trustee of her funds, you thought there’d be a chance for a shakedown. And then you found out about Mrs. Tump, or she found out about you, and you cashed in on that. But you were still doing business with Tidings. There was something he wanted… Now what did Tidings want?”
Freel put his hands on his knees. His head was lowered until his voice sounded muffled as he said, “You’ve got me wrong, Mr. Mason. It wasn’t anything like that at all.”
Mason strode over to him, placed his hand on the collar of the little man’s coat, and said, “Get up off that bed,” and, as he spoke, jerked Freel to his feet.
Mason whipped the pillows from the bed and felt underneath them. He turned to Paul Drake. “Give me a hand with this mattress, Paul,” he said. “We might as well try here first.”
Mason took the head of the mattress, Drake the foot.
“Flip it over.”
They turned the mattress over.
Freel came running forward to grab at Mason’s arm. “No, no,” he cried, tugging futilely at the lawyer’s right arm.
Mason shook him off.
“You can’t do that,” Freel screamed indignantly.
Near the center of the mattress on the under side, inch-wide strips of adhesive tape had been interlaced into a network. Mason took out his penknife and cut through the strips of tape.
Once more Freel lunged at him, and Mason said, without looking up, “Take care of that guy, Paul. He might get hurt on the knife.”
Drake slipped an arm around the man’s shoulders. “Come on, Freel,” he said. “Take it easy. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Freel struggled with frantic effort against Drake’s restraining arm. Mason, cutting through the strips of adhesive tape, disclosed a little recess which had been hollowed out in the padded cotton stuffing of the mattress. A roll of bills, fastened with two elastics, became visible in the opening. Mason pulled out the roll and unsnapped the elastic.
There were ten one-thousand-dollar bills in the roll.
Mason turned to Freel. “All right, Freel,” he said. “Who gave you the money?”
“Mrs. Tump,” Freel said.
“Tidings,” Mason corrected.
Freel’s eyes shifted. He shook his head nervously. Mason put the bills back into a roll, snapped the elastics around them. “All right, Freel,” he said, “if you’re going to act that way, this money goes out of the room with me. I’ll turn it over to the police.”
Freel moistened his lips. “What do you want?” he asked.
“The truth,” Mason said.
“Then will you give me my money?”
“Yes.”
Freel said, “Tidings gave it to me.”
“Tell me about it,” Mason said.
“I double-crossed Mrs. Tump,” Freel admitted miserably. “You’re right. Maybe I have done a tittle blackmailing. I’ve had to live since the Home let me go. If I’ve collected from a few people, it was because I had to. And I’ve never been able to get very much — just a tittle here and a little there — and I had to be careful because I only dared to work in the cases where they couldn’t complain to the police — cases where the publicity would have ruined someone. Sometimes I’d collect a little money from the father, sometimes from people who had adopted children and didn’t want the children to know about the adoption.”
Freel was whining badly now. “I didn’t ask for much money, Mr. Mason, only enough to get by on. I figured that the world owed me a living.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said. “Tell me about Tidings.”
“I went to Tidings. I told him what I knew about Byrl Gailord.”
“What did Tidings do?”
“He laughed at me and kicked me out.”
“Then what?”
“Then out of a clear sky, Mrs. Tump hunted me up. She offered me a thousand dollars in cash and fifteen thousand dollars later on if I’d bolster up her story about the adoption proceedings and about the Russian parentage of the girl… The entire thing was made up out of whole cloth. The girl was the illegitimate child of her daughter. The daughter’s married to a Des Moines banker. He’d have a fit if he ever found out… But that wasn’t the game that Mrs. Tump was gunning for. Byrl was getting along in society. Mrs. Tump had a marriage staked out with this man Reeger.”
“And then Tidings came back into the picture?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted me to promise that when the time came, I’d tell the absolute truth. That was all he asked.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to protect Mrs. Tump. I told him that I couldn’t. He laughed at me, and said he had enough on me to convict me of perjury if I didn’t; and then he offered me ten thousand dollars and… well, there was nothing I could do. I had to take the money. Otherwise, I’d have had to do just as he wanted, and wouldn’t have had a cent for it. You see, he had me… Anyone could have had me who was willing to go to court. My record for the last few years wouldn’t stand investigation. I knew it as well as anyone.”
“Did you,” Mason asked, “kill Tidings?”
“No, of course not.”
“Tidings had plenty on you,” Mason said. “Tidings was a hard man. He might have crowded you too far.”
“No,” Freel said tonelessly. “I didn’t kill him. I never killed anyone.”
Mason tossed him the ten thousand dollars. “All right, Freel,” he said, “here’s your money. Come on, Paul.”
Freel watched the two men out into the corridor. Then he darted over to close and lock the door.
“Put an operative on him,” Mason said to Drake.
“He’ll skip out,” Drake said.
“I want him to skip out,” Mason said, “and I want to know where he goes.”
Drake stopped at the corner drugstore to call his office. When he emerged, he nodded to Mason. “An operative will be on the job in ten minutes, Perry.”
“Now,” Mason said, climbing into Drake’s car, “tell me something about Peltham.”
“What about him?”
“He lived in an apartment?”
“Yes.”
“I believe you said he was rather circumspect.”
“Very.”
“Secretive?”
“Very.”
“Does the apartment house have a garage?”
“Yes. In the basement. There’s an attendant who has charge of the cars.”
“Did Peltham leave in his automobile?”
“No. His car’s still there.”
“Got the license number and a description?”
“Yes. It’s on the report that we sent into your office.”
“The number of his apartment and all that?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose police have searched the place?”
“Yes. They’ve gone through it with a fine-toothed comb.”
“Do you know if they are still watching it?”
“No, but they probably are.”
Mason said, “That’s going to complicate the situation a little.”
Drake said suddenly, “Perry, I’ll appreciate it a hell of a lot if you don’t tell me anything more about what you’re going to do. I don’t like the sound of it.”
Mason settled back against the cushion of Drake’s car. “Neither do I,” he said.