The Case of the Troubled Trustee

'Not too much. But he had me in kind of a peculiar position.'

'Blackmail?'

'Well, not exactly. Palmer was engaged in a sneak attack on the management of Steer Ridge Oil and Refining Company. He wanted to get rid of the management and put his own crowd in.'

'You knew that?'

'I knew that-at least, he told me.'

'Go ahead,' Mason said. 'What happened?'

'Well,' Dutton said, 'Palmer knew that Desere Ellis had a big block of stock in the oil company. At least, he assumed she did. He knew that her father had bought it and that it had gone into the trust fund.'

'And so?' Mason asked.

'And so he went to Miss Ellis and wanted her to give him a proxy. She told him that she couldn't do it because the stock was in my name as trustee. So then he asked her to write a letter to me as trustee, instructing me to give him a proxy on stock.'

'And she did?'

'She did.'

'And then?' Mason asked, his eyes showing his keen interest.

'Then, of course, I was in a spot,' Dutton said. 'I didn't have the stock. I didn't want her to know I didn't have the stock. That would have caused her to ask for an accounting. Therefore, I didn't want to tell him I'd sold the stock.'

'This was at a time when the value of the stock was low?'

'That's right. It was just before the strike in the new field. Palmer could have bought up control of the company if he could have found the stock and had the money, but he was working on a shoestring.'

'So what did you do?'

'I told him I would have to know more about what he had in mind, and what his plans for developing the company's property were before I'd honor Miss Ellis' letter.

'He insisted on seeing me; I refused to give him an interview. Then he played his ace in the hole. He told me he had something to tell me about Fred Hedley. He said it would eliminate Hedley from the picture as far as Desere Ellis was concerned. He said he needed money to carry on his proxy campaign and that if I'd bring him five thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills, he'd give me an earful of facts on Hedley that would put Hedley out of circulation.'

Mason regarded his client skeptically. 'And he also wanted proxies?'

'Yes.'

'He was a blackmailer then?'

'I guess that's the word for it. However, I'd have done anything to prevent Desere marrying Hedley.'

'What about proxies?'

'That's the strange, incredible thing,' Dutton said. 'When he made me that offer, I decided to take him up. I went out and bought up twenty thousand shares of Steer Ridge Oil stock in my own name. I got them at from ten to fifteen cents a share. I intended to let Palmer think they were the original shares of stock from the trust.

'Then within a couple of days the new strike was made and the stock started climbing sky high.'

'And the stock is in your name, and not in the trust?'

'That's right.'

'You have no letters from Palmer, no evidence to back up your story?'

'No.'

Mason shook his head. 'Tell that story to a jury and add it to your handling of the trust fund and you'll be crucified.'

'But I did what I felt was best.'

'For whom? For you or for Desere?'

'For everyone.'

Mason shook his head. 'A jury will think you sold out the Steer Ridge Oil stock from the trust fund; that you had a tip the new wells were in oil sand; that you acted on that tip to feather your own financial nest; that Palmer found out what you were doing, or rather what you had done, and was blackmailing you.'

There was dismay on Dutton's face. 'I hadn't thought of it that way.'

'Better start thinking of it that way now,' Mason said.

'Good heavens, everything I've done can be misinterpreted,' Dutton said.

'Exactly,' Mason agreed.

'You, yourself, don't even believe me,' Dutton charged.

'I'm trying to,' Mason said. And then added, 'That's part of my job. A jury won't have to try so hard.'

There was an interval of grim silence, then Mason said, 'So you agreed to meet Palmer surreptitiously at a spot that wasn't particularly convenient to pay over blackmail, but was ideal for murder.'

'He was the one who picked the spot,' Dutton said.

'Too bad he can't come to life long enough to tell the jury so,' Mason observed.

'Why in the world did you ever consent to go out there to meet him?' Mason asked after a few moments.

'That's where he wanted me to meet him.'

'Why?'

'He didn't say why, but I gathered that he had to be pretty furtive about what he was doing. He didn't want it to come out into the open that he was trying to round up proxies on the stock or get control of the corporation. He wanted to get himself pretty firmly seated in the saddle before he turned the horse loose and let it buck. And he seemed afraid to let anyone find out he was selling me information.'

'All right, you agreed to go out there,' Mason said, wearily, 'and you went out there.'

'That's right.'

'For your information,' Mason told him, 'the police have a wire recording of your conversation from the telephone booth. The one in which you agreed to go out there. You-'

The lawyer stopped before the expression of utter consternation on Dutton's face.

'How in the world could they get a wire recording of that conversation?' Dutton asked.

Mason regarded the man with thought-narrowed eyes. 'It seems to give you a jolt.'

'Good heavens, yes. Of course, it gives me a jolt. I picked out a telephone booth and- Wait a minute, there was some fellow snooping around on the outside.'

'He planted a bug and a wire recorder,' Mason said. 'I thought you should know it.'

Dutton lowered his eyes, then suddenly raised them. 'He bugged the conversation in the telephone booth, he didn't tap the line?'

'No,' Mason said. 'Wire tapping is illegal.'

'I see,' Dutton said. 'Then he only has my end of the conversation recorded on wire?'

'That's right.'

'Just that end of the conversation?'

'That's right, but your end was pretty incriminating. You said that you would go out there and meet him on the seventh tee at the Barclay Country Club.'

'Yes, I did,' Dutton said, slowly, 'and the police have that recording?'

'The police have that recording.'

Dutton shrugged his shoulders.

Mason said, 'All right, Dutton, you've stalled around now long.enough to have thought over all the angles. You've had plenty of time to think up a pretty good story; you have an idea of what the police have against you, so why not try to give me the facts? The real facts might help.'

'He was dead when I got there,' Dutton said.

'How long did you hang around?'

'Too long!'

'Why?'