him.'
Della Street turned from her telephone. 'Speaking of angels,' she said, 'Jarvis Reader is in the outer office.'
'He wants to see me?' Mason asked.
She nodded.
'Go bring him in, Della.'
Della Street said, 'Tell him Mr. Mason will see him, Gertie. I'm on my way out to get him.'
Della Street left the office to return a moment later with a powerful, somewhat stoop-shouldered man in his middle fifties. He had a weather-beaten face, bushy eyebrows, piercing gray eyes, and a belligerent manner.
'Hello,' he said. 'You're Mason?'
Mason grinned. 'You're Reader?'
'Right.'
'What can I do for you?'
Reader said, 'You're representing Kerry Dutton, I understand.'
'Who told you that?'
'Never mind. I want a straight answer. Are you or are you not representing Kerry Dutton?'
'Mr. Dutton has retained me to represent him in one matter. Yes.'
'In one matter?'
'That's right.'
'Well, there are going to be several matters.'
'Such as what?'
'I have learned,' Reader said, 'that Dutton made statements that I was crooked; that my management of the company was manipulated for my own purposes; that I didn't know straight up about oil; that I was primarily interested in bilking people into investing in stock so I could keep myself in power as the head of the company at a darn good salary.'
'When did you hear all this?' Mason asked.
'Some time ago, but I haven't done anything about it because I wanted to wait until I could prove what a liar Dutton was.
'Now then, my management has been vindicated, and I'll bet Dijtton wishes he had the twenty thousand shares of stock he sold a while ago.'
'Sold it?' Mason asked, inquiringly.
'That's right. That's when he made the statements. He was reportel to have sold the stock to a purchaser and warned hir1 that it probably wasn't any good; that I didn't know s raight up about the oil business; that I was just working a flimflam getting a lot of sterile acreage tied up So I could make a big showing to people who knew nothing about the oil business and keep drawing a nice salary, having an expense account, a private airplane ard all tLat sort of stuff.'
'If,' Mason said, 'you're really intending to sue my client, you shouldn't oe talking with me, and I certainly am not going tJ talk with you. You can get an attorney and have him (all Oil me if there's anything you want to adjust…'
'I don't need attorney,' Reader said. 'Not right away. I'm not to sue. I'm not here to threaten. I'm simply here to tell Dutton that I will accept an apology-a public apology which I can print in the papers.'
'Why don't you tell him?' Mason asked.
'Can't find him. He's hard to catch.'
'You've tried?'
'I've tried… I wanted to be the first to tell him about our oil strike before he read it in the papers. I couldn't find him. Then the news was released on the radio and the papers picked it up. Now he's heard all about it and I'm the last person in the world he wants to see.'
Mason said, 'Just as a matter of curiosity and not talking about any claims you may have against Mr. Dutton because I don't care to discuss them, you folks were friendly at one time?'
'Friends!' Reader exclaimed, drawing a forefinger across his throat. 'Oh, yes, we're friends. That guy has done everything he could to make it tough for me.'
'What I meant was that you knew him?'
'Hell yes, I knew him.'
'And have for some time?'
'Ever since he became trustee under that will. I went to him and wanted him to invest more money in Steer Ridge Oil. He laughed at me. I'll bet he wishes now he'd followed my advice. That trust would have been worth a lot of money today.
'I was friendly with Templeton Ellis. He had faith in me. He was one of my first backers. He put money into Steer Ridge on four different occasions; left a tidy block of stock, and just because it started going down in value, that smart-aleck trustee sold it out. Not only sold it out, but shot off his big mouth that the management was crooked; that no one in the company knew anything about the oil business and that I was getting leases on land that nobody else would touch with a tenfoot pole.'
Reader paused for a moment, then went on, 'Now, there's something else you'd better know about if you're getting yourself tied up with Dutton: The beneficiary of that trust thinks he still has the twenty thousand shares of Steer Ridge stock in the trust. She doesn't know he sold her out.'
'What makes you think that?' Mason asked.
'I don't think, I know. I'll tell you something else. Dutton will be frantically trying to buy that stock back. He's willing to pay almost any price for it. I'm personally going to see he can't get it back.
'When you see him, tell him that I know everything he's doing. And tell him that his stool pigeon, Rodger Palmer, who's trying to pick up stock and proxies, isn't going to get to first base.
'I've forgotten more about corporate management of oil properties than these birds ever knew… Tell Mr. Kerry Dutton that whenever he's ready to buy a page ad in the daily papers apologizing to me, I'll think about letting him off the hook. Until that time, he can fry in his own grease.'
Mason smiled. 'I think you'd better tell him that yourself, face to face, Mr. Reader.'
'I will if I can find the guy.'
Reader turned on his heel and started for the outer office, paused to say, 'And when Desere Ellis finds he's sold her out, there's going to be hell to pay.'
'You can go out this way,' Della Street said, holding open the exit door.
Reader hesitated a minute and said, 'Thanks, I'll go out the same way I came in. I like it that way.'
He strode out through the door to the entrance room.
Chapter Five
It was after seven-thirty. Mason and Della were closing up the office, and Mason was just holding the exit door open for Della when the unlisted phone rang stridently.
Mason said, 'That's the unlisted telephone. That'll be Paul Drake.'
Della Street nodded and hurried across to the instrument, picked it up and said, 'Yes, Paul?'
She nodded to Mason, who picked up the extension phone on his desk.
'Hi, Paul,' Mason said. 'What's new?'
'This fellow Dutton is something of a problem, Perry.'
'What about him?'
'He's being hard to find.'
'I didn't think he'd be easy or I wouldn't be paying you fifty dollars a day to look him up.'
'Well, he's trying to be real hard to find. Someone is looking for him and I have an idea that someone is a process server with some papers to put right in the middle of Dutton's hot little hand.'
'And you think Dutton's hiding out to avoid that?'
'He's hiding out to avoid something.'
