The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (7 page)

She hesitated a moment, then said, "Why should you do this for me?"

Mason laughed grimly. "I'll bite, why should I? Just a foolish loyalty I have for my clients. I protect them, even when they lie to me – which most of them do – or try to double-cross me – which has been done."

Her dark, luminous eyes studied the rugged determination of his face. She was suddenly cool and self-possessed. "Thanks," she said, "but I'm not your client, you know."

"Well," he told her, "you're the next thing to it. And I'm damned if I can figure you as being guilty of murder. But you've got to do a lot of explaining before you can convince anyone else. Go ahead, now, get out."

"My IOU's," she said. "If my husband ever…"

"Forget it," Mason interrupted. "Have confidence in me for a change. I'm having plenty in you."

She studied him for a moment thoughtfully, then stepped to the door, her eyes avoiding the desk. "Those IOU's," she said, "are…"

"Beat it," he interrupted, "and don't close the door. Leave it ajar, just as it was."

She slipped through the door, and a moment later the electric signal announced she had rounded the turn in the corridor.

Mason pulled a wallet from his pocket, counted out seventy-five hundred dollars in bills, opened a drawer of the desk with the toe of his shoe, and dropped the bills into the drawer. He kicked the drawer shut, held the IOU's clamped between thumb and forefinger, struck a match, and held the flame to the paper. By the time the flame had burnt down to his hand, the IOU's had withered into dark, charred oblongs, traced with a glowing perimeter which gradually ate its way into the darker centers.

Abruptly, the electric buzzer burst into noise, announcing that someone was coming down the corridor toward the office. A split-second later it zipped into noise once more – two people were approaching.

The lawyer crumpled the bits of burned ash in his hand, thrust the corners which had been unconsumed into his mouth, and stepped swiftly into the reception office, pulling shut the door to the inner office by catching the knob with his elbow. He wiped his darkened hands on the sides of his trousers, threw himself into a chair, opened a magazine, and was unwrapping a stick of chewing gum when the door of the reception office opened, to disclose Duncan, accompanied by a tall man with watery blue eyes, dressed in a tweed suit. Both men wore overcoats, and fog particles glistened from the surfaces of the coats.

Duncan jerked to a dead stop, stared at Mason and said, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Mason casually fed the stick of chewing gum into his mouth, rolled the wrapper into a ball, dropped it into an ash tray, munched the chewing gum into a wad and said, "I was waiting for Sam Grieb because I wanted to talk to him. Now that you're here, I can talk to both of you."

"Where's Sam?"

"I don't know. I knocked on the door, but got no answer, so I decided I'd wait – not having anything else to do… It's a wonder you wouldn't get some up-to-date magazines here. You'd think this was a dentist's office."

Duncan said irritably, "Sam's here. He's got to be here. Whenever the tables are in operation one or the other of us has to be in this office."

Mason shrugged his shoulders, let his eyebrows show mild surprise. "Indeed," he said. "Any way in except through this room?"

"No."

"Well," Mason said, "suppose I talk with you while we're waiting. I understand you've filed your case."

"Of course I've filed it," Duncan said irritably. "You aren't the only attorney in the country. If you're too damned dumb to take good business when it's offered you, there are others who aren't so finicky."

Mason said politely, "How about a stick of gum?"

"No. I don't chew it."

"Of course," Mason said, "now that you've dragged your difficulties into court, you've submitted yourself to the jurisdiction of a court of equity. That throws your assets into court."

"Well, what if it does?"

"Those IOU's," Mason pointed out, "are part of your assets. They were given for a gambling debt. A court of equity wouldn't permit itself to be used as a collection agency for a gambling debt."

"We're on the high seas," Duncan said. "There's no law against gambling here."

"You may be on the high seas," Mason told him, "but your assets are in a court of equity. It's an equitable rule that all gambling contracts are void as being against public policy, whether there's a law against gambling or not. Those IOU's aren't worth the paper they're written on. You've been just a little too smart, Duncan, you've turned seventy-five hundred dollars worth of assets into scrap paper."

"Sylvia would never raise the point," Duncan said.

"I'll raise it," Mason told him.

Duncan studied him with blue, glittering eyes, "So that's why you wouldn't represent me, eh?"

"That's one of the reasons," Mason admitted.

Duncan pulled a leather key container from his pocket, started to fit a key in the lock of the door to the inner office. "If Sam hasn't the door barred from the inside, I'll open it," he said to the man in tweeds, then suddenly turned again to the lawyer. "What's your best offer, Mason?"

"I'll give you the face value of the IOU's."

"How about the thousand-dollar bonus?"

"Nothing doing."

"You made that offer yesterday," Duncan remonstrated.

"That was yesterday," Mason told him. "A lot's happened since yesterday."

Duncan twisted the key, clicked back the spring lock, and flung the door open. "Well," he said, "you sit down and wait a few minutes, and… Good God! What's this!"

He jumped backward, stared at the desk, then whirled to Mason and yelled, "Say, what are you trying to cover up here? Don't tell me you didn't know about this."

Mason pushed forward, saying, "What the hell are you talking about? I told you…" He became abruptly silent.

The man in tweeds said, "Don't touch anything. This is a job for the homicide squad… Gosh, I don't know who is supposed to take charge. Probably the marshal…"

"Listen," Duncan said, speaking rapidly, "we come in and find this guy perched in the outer office, chewing gum and reading a three-months-old magazine. It looks fishy to me. Sam's been shot."

"Suicide, perhaps," Mason suggested.

"We'll take a look around," Duncan said, "and see if it's suicide."

"Don't touch anything," the man in tweeds warned.

"Don't be a sap," Duncan said. "How long have you been here, Mason?"

"Oh, I don't know. Four or five minutes."

"Hear anything suspicious?"

Mason shook his head.

The man in tweeds bent over the desk and said, "There's no sign of a gun. And it's an awkward place for a man to have hit himself with a bullet, if it's suicide."

"Look under the desk," Mason suggested. "The gun might have dropped from his hand."

The man in tweeds kept his attention concentrated on the body. "He'd have had to hold the gun in his left hand to do it himself," he said slowly. "He wasn't left-handed, was he, Duncan?"

Duncan, his blue eyes wide and startled, stood with his back against the vault door, his mouth sagging open. "It's murder!" he said, and gulped. "For God's sake, turn off that desk light! It gives me the willies to see his open eyes staring into that light!"

The man in tweeds said, "No you don't! Don't touch a thing."

Mason, standing in the doorway between the two rooms, taking care not to enter the room which contained the body, said, "Let's make sure there isn't a gun down there on the floor. After all, you know, it's going to make a lot of difference whether this is murder or suicide. I, for one, would like to know before we send out a report. He could have dropped a gun…"

Duncan stepped forward, bent over the body, peered down under the desk and said, "No, there's no gun here."

The man in tweeds asked, "Can you see? I'll get a light and…"

"Sure I can see," Duncan exclaimed irritably. "There's no gun here. You keep your eyes on this guy, Perkins. He's trying to get us both looking for something so he can pull a fast one. He's talked too damn much about a gun being down there."

Mason said ominously, "Watch your lip, Duncan!"

The tall man nodded. "I'd be careful what I said, Mr. Duncan. You haven't any proof, you know. This man might make trouble."

"To hell with him," Duncan snapped. "There's seven thousand five hundred dollars in IOU's somewhere around here, and Mason wants them. I'm going to take a look in the vault. You keep your eye on Mason."

Duncan crossed over to the vault, his back turned to the men as he faced the vault door, rattled the handle, then started spinning the combination. "I don't like the looks of things," he called out over his shoulder. "This guy Mason is smart, too damn smart."

The tall man said, "I wouldn't touch anything, Mr. Duncan. If I were you, I wouldn't open that vault."

Duncan straightened up and turned to face Perkins. "I've got to find out about those IOU's," he said indignantly. "After all, I own a half interest in this place."

"Just the same," Perkins persisted, "I wouldn't open that vault."

Mason, from the doorway between the rooms, said, "And you're leaving a lot of fingerprints on things, Duncan. The police aren't going to like that."

Duncan's face darkened with rage. "A hell of a slick guy, ain't you," he shouted, "standing there and telling us to look for a gun, and to do this and do that until you've got us leaving fingerprints all over things, and then telling us about it!

"To hell with you! You ain't in the clear on this thing – particularly if those IOU's are missing. You could have done the whole job here – easy! Sammy would have let you in, and you could have given him the works, and then gone back out, pulled the door shut, and been waiting here… Perkins, you're an officer. Search him. Let's see if he's got those IOU's. And he may have the murder gun in his pocket. Let's not let him talk us out of anything."

Mason said, "Listen, Duncan, I'm not going to be the goat in this thing."

Duncan faced him with blazing eyes. "The hell you're not! We come in here and find you sitting next to a murdered man, and you have the nerve to try and tell us what you're going to do and what you're not going to do!

"You're going to take it and like it, and you're going to be searched before you have a chance to ditch anything that you might have taken from this room. You know and I know there's something here you want, and want damn bad."

"So I came in and murdered Grieb to get it; is that right?" Mason asked.

The man in tweeds said, "Better be careful, Mr. Duncan, I think he's laying a trap for you. Don't accuse him of anything."

"I'm not afraid of him," Duncan said, "but I sure want to know a lot more about this thing before I let him go wandering off the ship."

"Well," Mason said, "suppose you search me now. I'll dump everything out of my pockets here, and you can both check the stuff."

"That's a good idea," the man in tweeds said. "I'd like to have someone check up on…"

"Take him into my bedroom," Duncan said. "That's through the door marked 'Private,' at the end of the bar. You go down a corridor, and my room's the second door on the left. Take him in there and wait until I come."

"When'll that be?" Mason asked.

"That'll be just as soon as I can get Arthur Manning in here. Manning's the one to handle this business. He's a special deputy. He's around the casino somewhere. You try and find him, Perkins. You'll know him when you see him. He's wearing a blue uniform with a badge on it that says SPECIAL OFFICER."

"You want me to parade around with this guy until I locate this deputy?"

"No – wait a minute – I'll signal him from here."

Duncan stepped behind the desk, reached down past Grieb's body and pressed a concealed button. The man in tweeds said, "I don't know what my legal rights are, but if I'm going to act under your orders, you're going to take all the responsibility. Is that understood?"

"Of course it is," Duncan said impatiently, "but watch Mason. Don't let him pull any fast ones, and don't let him ditch anything."

Mason drawled, "If you feel that way about it, Duncan, in justice to myself, I demand that I be handcuffed."

"You're asking for it?" Perkins inquired. Mason nodded.

Perkins heaved a sigh of relief and said, "You heard him say that, Duncan."

Duncan said, "Sure I did. Don't be so damn technical. Put the bracelets on him."

Mason held out his wrists. Perkins slipped the handcuffs on them and said, "Come on, let's go."

"The second door on the left after you go through the door marked 'Private,' at the end of the bar," Duncan instructed.

The man in tweeds slipped his right arm through Mason's left arm and said, "Put your wrists down, buddy. Then your coat sleeves will conceal the handcuffs. I'll hold my hand here and we can walk through the bar without making a lot of commotion."

Mason, still casually chewing gum, permitted himself to be escorted along the passageway, through the bar, through the door marked "Private," and into Duncan's bedroom.