When Mason and Della Street returned from lunch, Paul Drake had already returned and was waiting for them.
“What’s new, Paul?” Mason asked.
Drake said, “We’ve located Marcia Whittaker.”
“Good work, Paul. How did you do it?”
“Oh, just a lot of leg work,” Drake said wearily. “We covered the Bureau of Light, Water and Gas. She had an application in for electric lights and gas. It’s an unfurnished flat. She’s evidently buying furniture and settling down.”
Mason lit a cigarette and stared at the match for a long moment before shaking it out. “Marcia Whittaker’s this girl’s real name?” he asked.
“Yes. Why?”
Mason said, “As I get her character from your report, she’s a drifter. Now she gets a flat and starts buying furniture. What’s brought about this sudden stability?”
Drake hugged his knees. “Her split out of twenty thousand bucks.”
Mason slowly shook his head. “That would send her on a splurge, not make her settle down... Della, take a look at the papers — vital statistics. Just a chance, but maybe...”
The two men smoked in silence.
A few minutes later there was a triumphant grunt from Della. “This what you want? ‘L. C. Conway, 57, to Marcia Whittaker, 23.’ Notice of intention to wed.”
Drake slumped down dejectedly. “Oh — oh,” he said. “Here I thought I’d done something smart, when all I’d have had to do was sit in my office and open the newspaper... Just another case of the professional being trimmed by the gifted amateur.”
Mason grinned. “Anything more about Conway, Paul?”
“Nothing that helps. That twenty grand evidently made quite a difference to Conway. He sold his business to Guy T. Serle and gave Serle the right to keep on using the name of Conway Appliance Company.”
“Does Serle know where Conway is?”
“I don’t know. Look, Perry, what do you think of these?” He drew a pair of dice out of his pocket and threw them across the desk.
Mason looked at the dice, picked them up and rolled them three or four times, then laughed. “I’m ashamed of you, Paul,” he said.
Drake said seriously, “That’s the merchandise delivered to me by the Conway Appliance Company. Two pair of loaded dice, and a very special premium.”
Mason shook his head, slid open a desk drawer and threw the dice in it.
“What do you think the premium was, Perry?” Drake asked him.
“Marked cards.”
“No, a nice lottery ticket.”
Mason whistled. “You tailed the delivery?”
“Sure. He chased around to twenty or thirty addresses, then beat it back to the East Ranchester address. I picked up Serle — a guy about forty, nervous, quick-moving chap, six feet tall, pretty slender, bony features, pinkish blonde, gray-eyed, wears double-breasted suits. I put a tail on him to see if he has any contact with Conway... However, we have a cinch now. We can locate Conway by putting a shadow on the girl.”
Mason pinched out his cigarette with swift decision. “I’d rather talk with the girl than with Conway,” he said. “Della, when Phyllis Leeds calls, tell her Judge Treadwell has issued a writ of habeas corpus.”
“Why did you pick Treadwell?” Drake asked.
Mason grinned. “He has an arcus senilis.”
“What’s that?”
“One of the things psychiatrists like to pounce on in senile dementia cases. You’ll hear plenty about it in a day or two. Come on. Let’s go.”
Driving out in Paul Drake’s car, Mason said, “The way I figure it, Paul, I’m retained by Phyllis Leeds. I’m not working for Emily Milicant.”
Drake flashed him a sidelong glance. “Go on,” he said.
Mason lit a cigarette. “A word to the wise,” he said.
“I’m supposed to read your mind?” Drake asked.
Mason nodded.
They drove in silence for several blocks, then Drake turned a corner and said, “This is the place — any particular angle of approach?”
“No,” Mason said, “we’ll have to pick up the cards and decide how to play our hand when we see what are trumps.”
They rang the bell twice, then heard steps on the stairs. The door opened. A blonde, attired in gold and brown lounging pajamas, stared at them with evident disappointment, and said, “Oh, I thought you were the man with the drapes.”
Mason said, “Miss Whittaker?”
She said, “Yes. Now don’t you boys tell me you’re working your way through college.”
“We want to talk with you,” Mason said.
“What about?”
“About a private matter.”
As she continued to stand blocking the doorway, Mason added significantly, “Something which I think you’d prefer to discuss where the neighbors couldn’t hear.”
She glanced at the doors opening on the porch. “Come in,” she said.
Drake closed the door behind them. Marcia Whittaker silently led the way up the stairs.
The living-room had shades but no drapes. New rugs were on the hardwood floors. The furniture seemed stiff and unreal as though it had not as yet become accustomed to its new surroundings and settled down to homey comfort.
“Sit down,” she invited tonelessly.
Mason studied her face, the yellow hair with a darker fringe at the roots, her hard, blue eyes containing a hint of fear, her skin seeming smooth enough when her face was in repose but showing hard little lines which sprang into existence between her nose and the corners of her mouth as she placed a cigarette in her lips, adeptly scratched a match along the sole of one of her Chinese shoes, and said, “All right, let’s have it.”
Mason said, “It’s about that check you cashed.”
“My God,” she said, “can’t anyone cash a check without being hounded to death? You’d think I was the only person in the city who ever had a check to cash. I was a fool for giving my address. I found out afterwards I didn’t have to.”
“What was the consideration for that check?”
“None of your business.”
“The point,” Mason said, “is that this check was given by a man seventy-two years old who is now confined in a sanitarium.”
“That’s too bad,” she observed without sympathy.
“His relatives will appoint a guardian if they can,” Mason said, “and when the guardian is appointed he’ll demand all the papers. When he gets the papers, he’ll find that canceled check. Naturally, a guardian wouldn’t like anything better than to start making trouble about that check. It would give him a lawsuit, attorney’s fees, extraordinary compensation.”
“What trouble could he make,” she asked, and then added significantly, “for me?”
“Lots,” Mason said.
“Leeds didn’t give that check to me,” she said hotly. “I only cashed it.”
“You have the cash,” Mason said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“You’re marrying it, then.”
She glared at him, said nothing.
Mason, studying the expression in her eyes, said, “Why won’t Conway marry you?”
She flushed hotly. “Say, who cut you in on this deal?”
“I did,” Mason said.
“All right. Since you want to mess around in my private affairs, why doesn’t he marry me?”
Mason studied the end of his cigarette. “Do you think he ever intended to?”
“Of course, he intended to. He’d promised it all along, and then his family...” She broke off abruptly.
Mason said, “Well, if you ask me, I don’t think his family have any right to put on airs. You’re just as good as they are.”
“Say,” she said abruptly, her eyes narrowing, “how do you know all this?”
Mason said, “Oh, I get around.”
“Who are you?”
“The name’s Mason.”
“Who’s the guy with you?”
“His name’s Drake.”
“Well, what’s your racket?”
“Believe it or not,” Mason said, “we don’t have any. I thought I’d let you know about that check. Of course, Phyllis knows all about it.”
“Oh, she does, does she?”
“And Emily,” Mason observed.
For a split second, all trace of color left the girl’s face. Her eyes darkened with apprehension. “Emily knows about it!”
“Yes, Emily Hodgkins,” Mason went on.
Marcia Whittaker conveyed the cigarette to her lips, sucked in a deep drag, exhaled, tapped ashes from the end of the cigarette into the ash tray, and said, “Emily Hodgkins?”
“Yes, an assistant employed by Phyllis Leeds.”
“Oh!”
“You don’t know her?”
“I don’t know any of them.”
Mason said, “Your boy friend might be about twenty thousand bucks ahead if a guardian wasn’t appointed.”
She looked down at her Chinese slippers for several seconds, then raised her eyes to Mason, and said frankly, “Okay, I get you.”
“It’ll be too bad if your boy friend has a leaky face,” Mason said.
“I get you. I get you,” she said impatiently, “You don’t need to embroider the edges.”
Mason, getting to his feet, said, “Nice place you have here. Going to make a cozy little home.”
Sudden tears sprang to her eyes. “For Christ’s sake, don’t rub it in! I’ve tuned in on your program. You haven’t given your commercial yet, and I suppose you’re not going to. Now that you’re finished, why not get the hell off the air?”
“Thanks,” Mason said. “I will.”
She followed them as far as the head of the stairs. Her mouth corners were twitching. Tears were trickling down her cheeks, but she stood slim, straight, and defiant, watching the two men through the outer door.
As they walked across the street to the car, Mason said, “Judging from the way that banker talked, and your comments about her record in the apartment house, I thought we’d find a red light burning over the door.”
“Remember,” Drake said, “I was only taking the evidence of the people who had the apartment next door and the landlady who ran the joint.”
“All right,” Mason said, “suppose they were right? This kid’s young. Conway wanted to use her in that check business. The way he sold her was by promising to marry her when he made the stake.”
“Think he strung her along for the check business?” Drake asked, easing the car into gear.
“Of course, he did,” Mason said.
“How about his family?”
Mason said, “There may be something there.”
“Why all the agony over just cashing a check?” Drake asked. “That doesn’t amount to so much.”
“That,” Mason said, “is our most significant clue. It amounted to a hell of a lot in this case.”
Phyllis Leeds and John Milicant were waiting in Mason’s reception room when the lawyer returned to his office.
John Milicant, a baldish, black-haired, stocky man in the fifties, walked with an almost imperceptible limp — a slight favoring of his right foot. He shook hands, sat down, crossed well-creased, gray trousers, consulted his wrist watch and said, “Phyllis said you wanted to find out something about Alden Leeds. I’d appreciate it very much if you could rush things. I have an appointment I’m stalling off.”
Mason said, “You understand there’s going to be a family row?”
Milicant nodded. “Of course, Alden is right as a rivet. He’s a little peculiar at times, just a little eccentric. He’s no more crazy than I am.”
“You’ve had an opportunity to observe him during the last few weeks?” Mason asked.
“During the last month mostly,” Milicant said. “I drop in once in a while.”
Phyllis interposed. “Uncle Alden gets a great kick out of John. John’s about the only one who can give him a good fight over the chess board.”
Milicant said, “I don’t know whether he and Sis are going to hit it off or not. I don’t care. It’s up to them. I hope Sis has enough gumption to have it understood she’ll never touch a cent of his money. She doesn’t need it.”
“You mean you’d like to have him leave it to the relatives?” Mason asked.
Milicant said, “If I were in his shoes, Phyllis would get everything.”
“Have you shot any craps with him lately?”
“Yes. Sunday, I believe it was.”
“High stakes?” Mason asked.
“A two-bit limit. But if you made a pass, you could let it ride and keep on building up.”
“Would you consider it was being too personal if I asked you how much he won?”
Milicant said, “He didn’t win. I won somewhere around a hundred dollars, enough to get a suit of clothes. But he seemed to get a great kick out of losing.”
“I think it was because he was getting entertainment,” Phyllis Leeds said. “You know, John, you keep up a running fire of comment.”
Milicant laughed. “Well, I was always trained to talk to the dice. You can’t expect them to do anything for you if you don’t tell ’em.”
Mason said, “Just a moment. I want to find out about some papers. If you can wait just a moment, Mr. Milicant, I won’t detain you over five minutes.”
Milicant was again regarding his wrist watch as Mason strode across the office, entered the law library, and then detoured through the corridor door to Paul Drake’s office.
Mason nodded to Drake’s secretary, raised his eyebrows in silent interrogation, and pointed toward Drake’s private office. She nodded, and Mason went on in to find the detective sitting in his little cubicle, his feet on the desk, reading a paper.
Mason said, “Paul, I’m damned if I know whether this is just a hunch or whether I’m naturally getting suspicious of my fellow men. John Milicant is in my office. He’s around fifty-five, about five foot ten in height, fairly stocky, wears good clothes, bald on top, and has a slight limp.”
Drake frowned, and said, “What are you getting at, Perry?”
“Read that description again — the one that you have of L. C. Conway.”
“I get you,” Drake said. He pulled out his notebook, glanced through the description and said, “It fits. Of course, Perry, it would fit a lot of men.”
“I know,” Mason said, “but it’s worth a play. Milicant will leave my office in about two minutes. Do you have an operative you can put on his tail?”
“I’ll have a man on him when he leaves,” Drake promised.
Mason returned to his own office, said, “I wanted to look up a matter. I won’t need to keep you any longer, Mr. Milicant.”
Milicant crossed over to shake hands with Mason. “If there’s anything I can do,” he said, “don’t hesitate to call on me.”
“I won’t,” Mason said, and then to Phyllis Leeds, “How are you making it?”
Her face showed hard lines. There were puffs under her eyes. “All right,” she said. “It would be a lot better if I thought Uncle Alden was all right.”
“He’s all right,” Mason said. “Some doctor has him under opiates right now. That habeas corpus is going to scare them into the open. How’s Barkler getting along?”
“I don’t know. He isn’t there. I don’t know where he went.”
“When did he leave?”
“Early this morning.”
“Say where he was going?”
“No. He’s peculiar. He comes and goes as he pleases.”
Mason said, “All right. Go on back home. Try and get some rest. Take it easy. This is just preliminary skirmishing. Save your energy for the main fight. When we have that habeas corpus hearing, keep Emily Milicant out of the picture. I don’t want her to seem too interested.”
“Why?” John Milicant asked.
“Judge Treadwell might think she was waiting to sink her hooks into Leeds as soon as the court freed him,” Mason said.
“I get you,” Milicant nodded. “That’s good advice. Come on, Phyllis. I have to rush to keep an appointment.”