Mason, staring steadily at him, said, 'I'm Perry Mason, the lawyer.'
'Yes, I knew who you were,' Oxman said tonelessly. 'You left your apartment rather suddenly, didn't you, Mason?'
Mason grinned. 'Yes,' he said, 'I had business to attend to.'
'Did you,' Oxman inquired, 'know the police were looking for you?'
Mason raised his eyebrows. 'For me?'
'Yes.'
'On what charge?'
'Murder,' Oxman said. 'Being an accessory after the fact is, I believe, the specific charge.'
'Well,' Mason told him, 'it's fortunate I found you, then.'
'Go on,' Oxman told him, 'spring it.'
'I see by the paper,' Mason said, 'that you bought some IOU's from Grieb.'
'What if I did?'
'And paid cash for them.'
'Yes?'
'Cash which was found in the left-hand drawer of Grieb's desk.'
'I believe so,' Oxman agreed.
Mason slowly and impressively took from his pocket the three IOU's which Sylvia Oxman had signed that morning in the hotel. 'Take a look at these, Oxman,' he said.
Oxman moved forward on the bed. Mason, crossing his legs, held three IOU's pressed tightly against his leg so that Oxman could see the three signatures.
'So what?' Oxman asked.
'If these,' Mason suggested, 'are the original IOU's, where does that leave you, Oxman?'
Oxman yawned, patted his lips with four polite fingers, and said, 'Really, Mason, I'd have expected something far more clever from you.'
'Has it ever occurred to you,' Mason went on, 'that if I hold those original IOU's, the ones you have are forgeries?'
'Oh, I don't think Sam Grieb would have sold me forged IOU's.'
'We can prove in court that they're forgeries.'
Oxman's tongue made clucking noises against the roof of his mouth. 'Grieb shouldn't have sold me forgeries,' he said. 'That wasn't a nice thing for Grieb to have done. Of course, if they are forgeries, which remains to be proven, I can then recover the seventy-five hundred dollars from Grieb's estate. So you see, Mason, I personally have nothing to lose. Until you prove they're forgeries, I can collect on them as genuine. If you can prove they are forgeries, then, on the strength of the proof you've made, I can recover from Grieb's estate.'
'So that's the way you figure it, is it?' Mason asked.
Oxman nodded.
'You've thought this all out in advance as an argument to use in case you were confronted with the original IOU's,' the lawyer charged.
Oxman gestured contemptuously toward the three IOU's Mason was holding and said, 'Keep your shirt on. Those notes don't prove a damn thing, Mason.'
'Why not?'
'You're Sylvia's attorney. You've doubtless seen her since my signed statement was released to the papers. She can sign as many IOU's as she wants to. All she needs is a fountain pen. You can get the blanks in any stationery store. Probably you thought you could throw a scare into me by coming in here and flashing those IOU's on me. I'm not that simple. I'm surprised that you thought I was. You know, Mason, you're playing in bigtime stuff now. You're not up against simple boobs you can twist around your fingers with a lot of cheap bluff. Those IOU's you have may have been signed by Sylvia. That doesn't mean the IOU's I have weren't signed by Sylvia. She can sign her name as many times as she wants to.'
Mason said, 'You can't get away with it, Oxman.'
Oxman's laugh was sarcastic. 'That's what you think. You're the one who can't get away with it. You're representing Sylvia. Sylvia murdered Grieb.'
'Why?' Mason asked.
'To get possession of those IOU's.'
'Why didn't she get them then?'
'Because I'd already bought them. Grieb didn't have them.'
Mason stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles, exhaled cigarette smoke, and said, 'That's the trouble with you, Oxman. You're not a logical thinker.'
'All right,' Oxman said, 'go ahead and think some logic for me. I'll listen.'
Mason said, 'Grieb and Duncan were fighting. They wanted to reduce their assets to cash. They saw a chance to collect not only the face value of those IOU's, but a little bonus as well. They gave you to understand you could have them by paying a two-thousand-dollar bonus. You raised ninety-five hundred dollars, went out to the gambling ship to pick up the IOU's. You found your wife aboard and Grieb dead. At first it occurred to you you'd simply step out of the picture, then you figured it might be possible to involve Sylvia, have her convicted of murder, and put her out of the way.
'This morning you read the newspapers and learned that the police had discovered seven thousand five hundred dollars in cash in Grieb's desk. You suddenly saw an opportunity to do a little chiseling. You figured Sylvia had probably recovered and destroyed the original IOU's. You were planning to release a statement that you'd seen Sylvia in the room with Grieb's body. Why not claim that you'd paid the seventy-five hundred dollars for the IOU's? Forging Sylvia's signature wasn't so hard. You had letters and documents bearing her genuine signature. You secured notes and copied or traced her signature on them.'
Oxman yawned ostentatiously and said, 'You bore me, Mason. I'd really expected a man of your caliber would show more intelligence.'
Mason went on doggedly, 'When you first saw Sylvia, she was in the room with Grieb's body. Your first impulse was simply to get out, so you slipped back out of the way. Later on, when you realized Sylvia had failed to report the murder, and had also ducked out-but had left fingerprints on the top of Grieb's desk-you saw an opportunity to charge your wife with murder, claim you'd paid seventy-five hundred dollars for the IOU's, turn two thousand dollars back to your associates, together with the forged IOU's, and sit tight.
'If Sylvia had destroyed the original IOU's, she could never admit she'd done so. If someone else had paid cash for the notes, that person would never dare to come forward, because that would make him the last person to have seen Grieb alive. If…'
'All wrong, Mason,' Oxman interrupted. 'You must have been smoking marihuana.'
'Or,' Mason went on evenly, 'you noticed the original IOU's on the desk when you saw Sylvia in the room, and figured she was going to destroy them. If anything happened, and the originals turned up in the hands of some individual who was willing to admit having paid seventy-five hundred dollars for them-about one chance in a thousand-you could still claim Grieb had blackmailed you by selling you forged promissory notes. There was no one to disprove your story.'
Oxman said, 'You know, Mason, this is boring me. Let's have a little more entertainment, or else let's call in the police, let them take you into custody, and have this rather tiresome visit over with.'
Mason flicked ashes from the end of his cigarette and said, 'You see, Oxman, I can prove what I'm saying.'
Oxman raised politely incredulous eyebrows.
'A detective shadowed you all day yesterday,' Mason said. 'We know what time you went aboard the ship. And we know what you did after you boarded it. You went down the corridor once, and only once.'
Oxman's face showed surprise. 'My God, Mason, do you mean to say you have practiced law as long as you have, and still put confidence in private detectives? Your man, Drake, may be on the square, but the boys he hires are just like any other private dicks. About half of them are crooked as corkscrews.'
'These reports check with the facts,' Mason said with dogged patience.
Oxman laughed. 'What a sap you are, Mason! And you're supposed to be a big-time lawyer! Good Lord, man, I know I was being shadowed. I got a kick out of it. But if my shadow claims he followed me aboard that gambling
