Grieb flies off the handle. Now then, figure it out. If this partnership is going to bust up, it's a lot better to have eighty-five hundred dollars in cash to divide than seventy-five hundred in IOU's to try and collect.'
Drake said, 'That's so, Perry. I hadn't figured on that.'
' Duncan 's figuring on it,' Mason said.
They were silent for a moment. Quick, nervous steps sounded in the passageway outside of the office. The two men listened while the steps swung around the right-angle turn in the corridor and approached the door of the reception office. Iron bars were jerked back on the other side of the door from the inner office. A knob twisted. The door opened explosively and Duncan, carrying the IOU's, said to Mason, 'Okay. Pay over the money. It'll have to be cash.'
'How about your partner?' Mason asked.
'Pay over the cash,' Duncan said. 'I have the IOU's here. That's all you want…'
The door from the hallway opened. A woman in her middle twenties, her trim figure clad in a dark, tailored suit, stared at them with black, disinterested eyes, then turned to Duncan and said, 'I want to see Sam.'
Duncan crumpled the oblongs of paper in his right hand and pushed them down into his coat pocket. His gold teeth came into evidence. 'Sure, sure,' he said. 'Sam's right inside.' But he continued to stand in the doorway, blocking her passage.
Once more she flashed her eyes in quick appraisal of the two men, then stepped forward until she was standing within two feet of Duncan, who kept his left hand on the knob of the partially opened door. 'Well?' she asked smiling. 'Do I go in?'
Duncan shifted his eyes to study Mason and Drake, and she, following the direction of his gaze, glanced at them for the third time. Duncan 's smile expanded into a grin. 'Sure,' he said, his eyes focused on Drake's face, 'go right on in.' He shoved the door open, stepped to one side, raised his voice and said, 'Don't you two talk any business until I get there.'
She swept through the door and Duncan, still grinning pulled it shut behind her.
'Well, boys,' he said, 'it's too bad your little scheme didn't work. I'll see a lawyer tomorrow, Mason, and see if we can't pin something on you. We may have something to take before the D.A. In the meantime, don't forget the ship, boys. It's a nice place to gamble. We give you a good run for your money.'
Mason said, 'No, Duncan, we won't forget the ship.'
'And,' Duncan assured him, 'we won't forget you.' He escorted them down the corridor until the uniformed guard had opened the outer door. 'Well, good night, boys,' he said. 'Come back any time.'
He turned and retraced his steps down the corridor. Mason took the detective's arm and led him toward the gangway where departing patrons caught the speed boat.
'Was that Sylvia Oxman?' Drake asked.
'It must have been,' Mason said, 'and when she failed to recognize you and you gave her a dead pan, Duncan saw the play. Remember, you're supposed to be the lady's husband.'
'Doesn't that leave us in something of a spot,' Drake asked anxiously, 'having tried to pick up the lady's notes and pulled all this hocus-pocus?'
'That depends on the breaks,' Mason said gloomily. 'Evidently it isn't our night to gamble.'
Drake pushed his fingers down inside his collar, ran them around the neckband of his shirt, and said, 'Let's beat it. If we're going to be pinched, I sure as hell don't want to go to jail in this outfit.'
CHAPTER 4
MASON LOOKED across his desk at Matilda Benson and said, 'I sent for you because I'm going to ask you a lot of questions.'
'May I ask you some first?' she inquired.
He nodded.
'You saw Grieb?'
'Yes.'
'Get anywhere?'
Mason shook his head and said, 'Not yet. The breaks went against me.'
She eyed him in shrewd appraisal. 'I suppose you don't go in much for alibis and explanations.'
Mason shook his head and was silent.
'Do you want to tell me about it?'
'No.'
'Well, then, what's the next move?' she asked.
Mason said, 'I'm going to try him again-this time from another angle. Before I do, I want to know more of what I'm up against.'
She opened her purse, took out her cigar case and selected a cigar. While she was cutting off the end, Mason scratched a match and held it across the desk to her. She regarded him with twinkling eyes through the first white puffs of cigar smoke and said, 'All right, go ahead. Ask your questions.'
'What do you know about Grieb?'
'Nothing much. Just what my granddaughter tells me. He's hard and ruthless. I warned you he wouldn't be easy.'
'Know anything about Duncan?'
'Sylvia says he doesn't count. He's sort of a yes-man.'
'I think your granddaughter is fooled,' Mason said.
'I wouldn't doubt it. She's too young to know much about men of that type. She can size up the sheiks all right, tell just about when they're going to start getting ambitious and what their line's going to be, but she can't size up gamblers.'
'Her husband wants to get a divorce?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Why do men usually want to get divorces?'
Mason shook his head impatiently and said, 'You'll have to play fair with me, Mrs. Benson. What's behind all this?'
She smoked in silence for a few seconds and said, 'When my granddaughter is twenty-six, which'll be next year, she gets one-half of a trust fund, and her daughter, Virginia, who's six, gets the other half, unless a judge should decide Sylvia isn't a fit person to have the custody of Virginia. In that case, Virginia gets all of it.'
'And with a situation like that brewing,' Mason said incredulously, 'she's given IOU's to a couple of gamblers?'
Matilda Benson nodded. 'Sylvia's always done pretty much as she pleased. That's why the property was left in trust and not given to her outright.'
'So her husband's trying to get some evidence which'll give him a divorce and cause Sylvia to lose her share of the trust funds?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'So his daughter will have twice as much money, and so he can have the handling of that money. If he ever finds out about those IOU's, he'll get them and use them to show Sylvia can't be trusted with money. He has other evidence, too, but, right now, he wants to show she can't be trusted with money. You'll have to work fast. I want those IOU's before Sam Grieb finds out how important they are.'
Mason said slowly, 'I think Grieb already knows.'
'Then we're licked before we start.'
'No, we're not licked, but I begin to see why you wanted a lawyer. How much is the trust fund?'
'Half a million in all. If Frank Oxman ever gets the custody of Virginia and gets his hands on the money it'll be like signing the kid's death warrant.'
'Surely not that bad,' Mason said.
