Standing on the curb in front of Coontz Cutter’s office, Drake mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, looked reproachfully at the lawyer and said, “Perry, you told me you were only going to carry on the act until she flushed Rooney from cover.”
Mason said, “Well, I changed my mind.”
“I don’t suppose it makes any difference to you that you damn near scared me to death, ” Drake said. “How did you know he’d done embezzling?”
“I didn’t,” Mason confessed. “It was just a hunch. When he latchkeyed the door of that apartment I figured it would be a good time to see it through.”
A cruising cab saw Mason’s signal, swung into the curb.
“What would have happened if we hadn’t been able to make it stick? ” Drake asked.
Mason grinned. “You’d probably have had your supper in jail, Paul.”
“Good Lord, Perry, you take awful chances,” Drake said, as he climbed into the cab.
“I like to gamble,” Mason told him.
“I’ll say you do!”
It lacked twenty minutes to five when Mason opened the door of his private office and ushered Paul Drake into the room.
Della Street, seated at a private switchboard, with an ear phone clamped over her head, and covering her right ear, looked up as they entered, snapped a plug and said, “What’s new, Chief?”
“The embezzlement business is out, ” Mason said.
“You threw a scare into Rooney?” she asked.
“Did more than that,” he told her. “Rooney confessed. He’s the embezzler. What’s new at this end?”
Della Street consulted a notebook. “They’re holding Belle Newberry in San Francisco without charges. They’re holding the mother on suspicion of murder. They found a thirty-eight caliber revolver on the boat deck. Two chambers had been fired. They’ve identified Mrs. Newberry as Mrs. Moar and one of the San Francisco papers has run a story about the embezzlement. Roy Hungerford’s waiting in the reception room.
“I thought we’d head off that embezzlement,” Mason said, dropping into the big swivel chair back of his desk and looking at his wrist watch. “Seconds were precious. I guess we missed it by a matter of minutes. What does Hungerford want?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been too busy to see him. I’ve engaged a suite of rooms in San Francisco and have a plane chartered and waiting.”
Mason said, “Get me the district attorney’s office in San Francisco. Find out who’s in charge of this case and get him on the line.”
“Donaldson P. Scudder is in charge,” she said. “Just a minute, I’ll get him on the line.”
She moved a mouthpiece up to her lips, snapped a switch and put through a call.
Mason said, “Wait here, Paul. I’m going to see Hungerford.”
“Want me to get out,” Drake asked, “and let you have the office?”
Mason said, “No. I’ll see him in the law library.” He walked through the law library to the reception room, opened the door and said, “Come in, Hungerford.”
Hungerford jumped to his feet and shook hands with Mason as the lawyer closed the door of the library and motioned toward a seat. “Well?” Mason asked.
Hungerford dropped into a chair, as Mason seated himself on the other side of a long, mahogany table.
“I wanted to talk with you about Belle,” Hungerford said. “What about her?” Mason asked.
“I came down on a plane,” Hungerford said. “I was talking with San Francisco a half hour ago on long distance. I understand the newspapers are carrying a story that Carl Newberry, posing as a well-to-do tourist, was C. Waker Moar, an absconding employee of the Products Refining Company. He’d been working on a salary of a hundred and eighty-five dollars a month.”
“So what?” Mason asked.
“And the San Francisco newspapers carry an interview by Charles Whitmore Dail in which he says that Moar absconded with twenty-five thousand dollars of the company’s funds; that had he lived, detectives would have met him at the gangplank and jailed him on a charge of embezzlement; that he has every reason to believe the money which Moar had in the money belt was part of the funds embezzled from the Products Refining Company.”
Mason lit a cigarette and said, “Go on.”
“I want to know what you know about it,” Hungerford said.
“Have you talked with Belle?”
“No. I can’t. They’re holding her in San Francisco.”
Mason met Hungerford’s anxious eyes. “All right,” he said. “Newberry was Moar. He was employed by the Products Refining Company.”
“Where did he get the money on which he was traveling?” Hungerford asked. “Do you know that?”
“He says he won it in a lottery,” Mason said.
“And was there a twenty-five thousand dollar shortage in the Products Refining Company?”
“Yes,” Mason said. “I believe that’s correct.
For several seconds Hungerford was silent. His eyes focused on the shelves of leather-backed law books. Then he once more met Mason’s eyes. “She told me,” he said, “that she’d see me at the Santa Anita Race Track. Apparently she intended to keep right on— well, traveling in my set.”
Mason watched him thoughtfully. “Let’s see if I get you straight, Hungerford. You come to me with all this dirt, hoping I’ll be able to contradict it, hoping I can tell you something good about her, is that right?”
“No,” Hungerford said.
“The hell it isn’t!” Mason told him. “You’re interested in Belle, but you don’t know how much. You’re so wrapped up in conventions that you can’t separate her from her parental environment. When you come right down to it, it’s not Belle you’re uncertain of, but yourself.”
Hungerford flushed, started to make an angry retort, then, under the steady stare of the lawyer’s eyes, lost his anger. After a moment, he said, “I guess you’re right, Mr. Mason. I hadn’t stopped to analyze my own feelings... but I can tell you now that this little talk has helped me understand myself. I know how I feel now.”
Mason watched him with sympathetic eyes.
“Now then, ” he said, “I’ll tell you something. Belle didn’t intend to keep right on traveling in your set, as you’ve expressed it, because she never intended to see you again.”
Hungerford’s face showed surprise.
“Get this,” Mason said, “and get it straight. If there was anything illegal about the manner in which Carl Moar acquired that money, Belle didn’t know it. He told his family he’d won it playing a lottery. That’s what Belle thought. Moar had been working and saving on a small salary. He’d been a bachelor much of his life. He wasn’t Belle’s father. Belle’s father abandoned her and her mother when she was three years old. They’ve never seen or heard from him since. Mrs. Newberry had a little money, enough to get by on. She put Belle through college. Then she married Carl Moar. Naturally, Belle had but little sympathy for her natural father. She became very much attached to Carl Moar. He was the only real father she’d ever known. Then the family had this windfall. She had a chance to travel. She met you. You were inclined to accept her as one of your crowd. You found her interesting, and because her father and mother seemed to be well-to-do tourists, you acted on the assumption they were.”
“That’s the only ground on which Belle could have met you and enjoyed your companionship. Otherwise you’d have patronized her, or ignored her, or pitied her. She was smart enough to know she could never be received on that basis after you returned to your friends on the Mainland. Therefore, she intended to walk off the ship and never see you again. The memory of a few days of pleasant companionship would be something which she’d always cherish. It never entered her head that her stepfather was an embezzler. If she had thought there had been anything illegal in the manner in which he acquired his money, she’d never have touched a cent of it.”
Hungerford said simply, “I care for her — a lot.”
Mason said, “ I don’t know where Moar got the money. I do know that he wasn’t Belle’s father, and I do know that Belle believed he won it in a lottery.”
“Who’s taking care of your fees?” Hungerford asked abruptly.
“Mrs. Moar will,” Mason said. “I haven’t discussed fees with her as yet.”
Hungerford said, “Look here, Mr. Mason. I want to help.”
“Why?”
“Because I care for Belle — a lot more than I ever realized.”
“You’re not hypnotizing yourself into believing you care for her because she’s in a jam, are you?” Mason asked.
Hungerford said, “Mason, I don’t know as I’d ever have known exactly how I felt toward Belle if it hadn’t been for what has happened, I’ve known lots of girls. I suppose I’m considered a good matrimonial catch. The girls themselves have been pretty decent. But mothers have dangled their daughters in front of my eyes until I feel that I’ve seen them all. Belle is different. I’ve met lots of girls who were flippant and full of wisecracks. It’s the attitude they cultivate, for the purpose of appearing modern. Belle’s different. She’s naturally buoyant. She’s eager to live. She wants to wade right out and meet life halfway.”
“Go ahead,” Mason told him, “you’re doing fine.”
Hungerford stared steadily at Mason. “I want to marry her.”
“A Hungerford,” Mason asked, “marrying the daughter of a criminal?”
“Stepdaughter,” Hungerford corrected.
“What will your father say?” Mason asked.
“I hope he’ll say the right thing,” Hungerford said, “because if he doesn’t, it’s going to mean we’ll be estranged from each other. I’m telling you this, Mr. Mason, because I want you to understand why I’m asking to be allowed to contribute toward your fees. Naturally, I’ll ask you to consider what I’ve told you as a sacred confidence. I... well, I naturally want to...”
“Naturally you want to ask Belle yourself?” the lawyer asked with a smile.
“Something like that,” Hungerford said. “I hope she cares for me. I think she does.”
Mason said, “All right, after you’ve asked her, and heard what she has to say, we’ll talk about letting you contribute something toward my fees. In the meantime, we’ll carry on the way we are. One thing, however, may be of interest to you. Carl Moar didn’t embezzle any money from the Products Refining Company.”
“He didn’t?”
Mason shook his head.
“You can prove that?” Hungerford asked eagerly.
“I wouldn’t make the statement unless I could prove it,” Mason said, “and,” — with a dry smile — “for your own personal information, I think that some of the funds for Mrs. Moar’s defense will be contributed by your friend, Charles Whitmore Dail — that is if he has released an interview to the newspapers in which he accuses Moar of embezzlement.”
“Then Moar did win the money in a lottery?” Hungerford asked.
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I’m afraid not.”
“Where did he get it?”
“That remains to be seen. Of course, we don’t know that the money which was found in a money belt under the mattress of Moar’s bed belonged to him. It may have belonged to Mrs. Moar.”
“What does she say about it?” Hungerford asked.
“She doesn’t say,” Mason said drily.
For a moment Hungerford was silent.
Mason said, in a kindly tone, “I want you to know these things, Hungerford, before you burn any bridges.”
“My bridges are burnt, as far as that’s concerned,” Hungerford told him simply. “There’s only one person in the world who can make me happy and that’s Belle. I want her.”
Mason said, “One other thing you don’t want to overlook is that at present her mother is accused of murder. Circumstantial evidence against her looks rather black.”
“Her mother didn’t do it,” Hungerford said. “Belle’s mother simply couldn’t have done anything like that.”
“Well, opinions differ in those matters. The San Francisco district attorney seems to think otherwise.”
Hungerford said, “That reminds me, Mr. Mason, I’ve uncovered something I want to tell you about. In fact, a couple of things.”
“Go ahead.”
Della Street opened the door, smiled at Hungerford and said, “Mr. Scudder, the deputy district attorney in San Francisco, is on the line.”
Mason picked up the phone on the law library table and said, “Put him on here, Della.”
Della closed the door and Hungerford said, “The message which Mr. Newberry — I mean Mr. Moar — received just before he left the table was sent by a Miss Evelyn Whiting, a nurse who was accompanying a man with a broken neck.”
Mason heard a click on the line and a man’s voice saying, “Yes... Hello. This is Mr. Scudder.”
“Mason talking, Mr. Scudder,” Mason said. “I want a preliminary hearing in that Newberry case.”
“You can have it any time,” Scudder told him. “However, I deem it only fair to advise you, Mr. Mason, of what you may not know at this time. The San Francisco papers are carrying a story to the effect that Mr. Moar had embezzled twenty-five thousand dollars from the Products Refining Company. The money in the money belt which was recovered by the captain was undoubtedly a part of that embezzled money which Mrs. Moar had removed from Moar’s body before pushing him overboard. It, therefore, can’t even be used by Mrs. Moar to defray any legal expenses.”
“That doesn’t change my position in the least,” Mason said. “I want an immediate hearing, and you’re holding Belle Newberry. I want her released.”
“I’m afraid,” Scudder said, “that will be impossible.”
“All right,” Mason told him, “I’m getting out an application for a writ of habeas corpus and flying to San Francisco with it tonight. Either put a charge against her or release her.”
He snapped the receiver back into position, looked up at Hungerford and said, “How do you know?”
“About Miss Whiting?”
“Yes.”
“One of the room stewards saw Miss Whiting slip a note on the glass-covered shelf in front of the purser’s window. He feels certain it was the same note that was delivered to Moar.”
Mason frowned thoughtfully. “How was she dressed?” he asked. “Did the room steward say anything about that?”
“No,” Hungerford said, “he didn’t. He merely mentioned he saw her putting the envelope there. His name is Frank Bevins. I don’t think he’s said anything to the officers. In fact, I gathered from what he told me, he didn’t want to have any contact with the officers. I think the man may be wanted himself. He told me he had some information he’d give me for fifty dollars.”
“You paid him the fifty?” Mason asked.
Hungerford nodded. “You see,” he said, “the stewards knew that I’d been with Belle quite a bit.”
“And this man didn’t want to be a witness?”
“I think,” Hungerford said, “he was going to take the fifty dollars and skip out. He told me that he’d taken the job as room steward so that he could lie low for a while.”
“Then it’s just a tip,” Mason said, “nothing I could use as evidence.”
“That’s right.”
“Know anything else?” Mason asked.
“I understand the Fell girl is telling a different story now from what she did at first. She claims now she actually saw Mrs. Newberry shoot her husband and push him over the rail.”
Mason said, “The thing grows with repetition, doesn’t it?”
“It seems to.”
Mason picked up the telephone and pushed the button which connected him with Della Street. “Della,” he said, “tell Paul Drake to telephone his correspondents in Honolulu and have them find out everything they can about Evelyn Whiting, the nurse who came over on the ship with us. Have him send an operative to see Ida Johnson, Aileen Fell’s cabin-mate, and get a written statement from her. The Johnson girl’s friendly. And tell Paul to get a photograph of Aileen Fell in a dinner dress.”
“Just a minute,” Della Street said.
Mason held the phone and could hear her transmit the message to Drake, then she said into the telephone, “Drake says he can get a prompt report from Honolulu but he doesn’t know how he’s going to get a photograph of Aileen Fell in a dinner dress. He says the district attorney will have a couple of detectives guarding her and—”
“Get some politician to throw a party for the detectives,” Mason interrupted. “Tell them it’s formal and the dicks will show up in their tuxedos, then Drake’s photographer can pose as a newspaper photographer and take a flashlight. No detective ever overlooked an opportunity to have his picture taken in a tuxedo... My God, do I have to tell Drake how to run his detective agency?”
Della Street laughed and said, “Paul was just telling me his parents had made a mistake. He should have been quintuplets.”
“You’d think he was from his expense accounts,” Mason said. He hung up the receiver, reached across the table and shook hands with Hungerford. “Thanks a lot, Roy,” he said. “If it becomes necessary to call on you for a financial contribution, I’ll let you know. I don’t think it will be. Would you like to fly up to San Francisco with us right after dinner?”
“No, thank you,” Hungerford said. “I have my own plane. But I’ll see you up there.”
Mason escorted Hungerford to the door, stepped into the outer offices, shook hands with the office force, chatted for a few minutes about China and Bali, then piloted Jackson into the law library.
Jackson blinked studious eyes from behind tortoise shell glasses and said, “You’re going to have a tough time with Rooney, Mr. Mason. I feel that I should warn you.”
Mason grinned, “You don’t seem to like him, Jackson.”
Jackson said, “He’s an arrogant, dictatorial, obstinate nincompoop.”
“You really should take up profanity, Jackson. It’s a lot more satisfying,” Mason told him.
“You insinuated I wasn’t fighting,” Jackson went on in a hurt voice. “I want you to know I did everything humanly possible. I left no stone unturned, Mr. Mason. I told Mr. Rooney in no uncertain terms exactly what I wanted, and when he refused to accede to my request I openly accused him of betraying the best interests of the corporation.”
Mason opened a drawer, took out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “Jackson,” he said, “when you start fighting, never try to hit the other man where he’s expecting the punch. And when you once start a fight, never give up until the other man’s licked. If you can’t do it by hook, do it by crook. By the way, I don’t suppose you happen to know a Marjory Trenton?”
“No, sir.”
Mason filled the whiskey glasses. “That’s where you made your mistake, Jackson.”